Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Kindred Spirits

One of my favorite comfort books is Anne of Green Gables. When I feel low, or sick, I dig out my Anne books. I have Anne's House of Dreams on my new MP3 player. I was listening to it while stuck in a doctor's waiting room. I love that Anne (my middle name is Anne as well - with an "e") is always looking for kindred spirits. It made me think of the kindred spirits in my life.

Dana - I can't think of when we weren't friends. I met her in 7th grade. Our weekends used to be filled with watching Love Boat, Fantasy Island and listening to her Steve Martin albums. A few years ago, we were out to diner. Across the street was a record store. I had a feeling there might be those same Steve Martin albums on CD. There they were. We bought them and we each have copies. When Steve pops up on my iPod, It brings me back to Dana.

David - He was visiting his friend, an Irish exchange student, near my parent's house in Chicago. The friend's name was Mal. I always say short for malcontent. He was a crab. I tried being nice to him, take him to some unique Chicago places. He hated everything. My dad had a sailboat and said that Mal, the host family were going to be going sailing - did I want to come along. I was about to say no when Mal introduced his friend, David. David was the opposite of Mal - he was witty and funny. Because of him, I went sailing. Out on the boat, my dad let David steer the boat. There was a depth gauge - dad didn't think it was working right. It was erratic. At some point my dad was lost in conversation. The depth gauge said something like 50 ft, then 40, 30. David pointed this out to me. We both were thinking "Oh shit!" Were we in some weird shallow area? Somehow we got past that point and thegauge went back to being all erratic. David has been my friend ever since we almost beached my dad's boat.

Caroline We were both transfer students at MCAD and kinda cynical about college. Most of our classmates were new and still loving it. Caroline was in my type class. I could hear that she did not have a Minnesoooooda accent. Something from the east. We're going around the room introducing ourselves. She says something like "I'm a transfer student," and that was about it. I walked over to ask her where shetransferred from. "Oh, you wouldn't know it." She was kind of curt. But I was curious. Try me. "Bard College" I knew of it and had stories of a recruiter coming to my high school and actually a car from Bard hitting my mom's car in NY. I responded something like it's some crazy art school in Upstate New York. Nobody else had known the answer. That's when we bonded.

Ken - we met on a film shoot taking place in the Stillwater jail. Or I just like to say I met Ken in prison. It's more shocking. I was doing production work and he was doing sound. At some point it was getting stressful - he said something like I sure do wish I had some Maalox Whip. Maalox in an aerosol can. We by chance thought it was hilarious. And we were probably the only ones who had bought it.

Patrick - I can remember him making fun of Chisholm/Bop, a system using human fingers as an abacus. It was featured in an old '70s commercial. And that he laughed at my answering machine message of the evil killer Teddy Ruxpin. Grandma said the message would scare away the boys. I told her if that scared them, then good. She didn't get it. Pat said it didn't scare him.

Karen - she is in my book club. I can remember joking around saying my company was looking for part time workers to work the ice cream carts. I was shocked when she was actually interested - and now she and her husband are some of our top sellers.

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