To say I was shocked would perhaps be an understatement.  While Jessica and I had spoken a little bit online and even run into each other on campus once or twice, our one-on-one interactions were pretty rare.  However, the few points of reference that I did have for such an occasion included a greeting of some sort.  Then again, Jessica was aware of my assault and injuries, and so decided to skip the pleasantries and plunge straight into the interrogation with all of efficiency and bluntness of a wrecking ball.

The Little General’s impromptu grilling confused me, and instead of answering with a coherent, straightforward assertion, I answered more in the form of a question.

“Uhhh, to get food?”

I would have thought my answer an acceptable one, but for some reason, it seemed to further irritate and confuse her.  I know this, because her eyes narrowed, but her mouth opened marginally–seemingly in surprise–and she took that stance that people use when they’re about to tear someone else apart.  Usually such stances aren’t taken over someone trying to nourish him or herself, though.

“Alone?”

Now, there were several possible answers to this, the majority of which sarcastic, because it was a stupid frigging question in the first place since we both already knew the answer being that no one was with me.  I suppose that I could have been meeting someone, but being that I had said that I was going to get food and she asked if I was doing that particular activity alone, not whether I would be meeting someone, the answer was obvious.  Blatantly obvious.  However, being that she already looked ticked, I made a rather large personal sacrifice and opted for honesty over sarcasm.

“Yes.”

And then it came.  It’s not as if I wasn’t aware that I had recently been attacked at night.  The pain from my ribs every time I breathed was a constant reminder.  Would I have preferred to have someone accompany me?  Absolutely.  However, I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone, and it was my fault that I got wrapped up studying and missed dinner, so I didn’t exactly feel as if I had a leg to stand on and request someone drop what they do and escort me so that I could shovel food down my throat.  Though, at that moment, my appropriately named Red Dynamo was giving me hell and annoying the crap out of me, and I was suddenly rethinking my decision to be nice instead of sarcastic.  Then again, it was strangely endearing, albeit infuriating, or at least as endearing as an acquaintance who is butting into your personal business on the street can be.

The little spitfire seemed to huff for a second before she asserted, “Ok.  I’m coming with you.”  Knowing that if I declined her, it would be quite stupid given my current situation and her persistence, and that she could follow me anyway, I agreed and just mentally revised the past thirty seconds to pretend that she had said she’d like to come with me and would that be ok?  And I said, “Why, of course.”  Because if I didn’t, I’d dwell on her inviting herself and then that’d make me mildly annoyed and huffy for the five-minute walk there, and I didn’t want that because, despite pushing herself on me, she had good intentions.  On the way there, the wait for my food and the walk back, we talked more.  I told her more about the attack,  and she got all protective over me.  Why, I don’t know.  I couldn’t figure it out then, and I still can’t.  She just naturally came into that role where I was concerned.  She talked about Russian and the fact that she can’t speak it, and then she lectured me on going out at night by myself.  We were together for all of half an hour, but she seemed to fit an hour’s worth of lecturing in within that stretch of time.

We walked up the steps together to the landing connecting both of our buildings, and we said goodnight to one another and walked in separate directions into our respective brownstones.

To my relief and surprise, it was a message from Jessica.  She apologized for taking so long to get back to me, stating that she hadn’t been at her computer.  She then answered my question, and we discussed the paper a bit before we ended the conversation to work on our respective papers.  Throughout the next several hours we would occasionally message one another while we worked—to commiserate, to encourage, to distract or just to keep each other company.

We never talked online after that unless it was about class, and I would guess we conversed maybe two or three times throughout the remainder of the semester after that.  The rest of the semester went much as the previous year’s–our tentative friendship growing but never really going anywhere.  It was a classroom friendship with the occasional online discussion.  I was ok with this.  For one, I was going through a really rough time–though that time cemented my decision to graduate a year early–and I wasn’t really looking to let someone else into my life because I was worried someone might figure out what was going on, and I really didn’t need to go through the ordeal of losing a friend so quickly after gaining one.  (I was broken, and I believed that once someone realized that, they’d bail.  When my boyfriend at the time found out, he pretty much emotionally abandoned me sometime during this and our relationship was never the same again.  I fully believed everyone else would, too.)  For another, I didn’t feel like pushing my luck.  People like Jessica do not hang out with people like me, and if they do, they don’t tend to enjoy it.  It’s like putting oil and water together.  We had nearly gone two semesters that she had somehow tolerated me enough to talk to me, and I had yet to actually correct her grammar, though I wanted to.  Oh, how I wanted to.  I knew my luck could only last so long, and I was ok with leaving well enough alone.

And so that semester ended much the same as the one before save for the prayer that I never encounter Katie or Melissa in class again.  (The response went a little something like this–God: There’s a kid with leukemia praying to me right now, and you want me to make your life easier?  Me: Yes?  God: [sigh]  Me: Was that wrong?  That was wrong, wasn’t it?  I should’ve said, “No,” right?  How about an A instead?  Or a pony?)  I went on my merry way and decided that I didn’t need to say goodbye, because I felt as if I’d done more than my fair share of tempting fate already.

During the next semester, Jessica and I occasionally IMed each other, usually in response to an away message one or the other of us had up.  Our conversations were infrequent at best–perhaps surprising considering she lived in the brownstone next to mine and I probably could have seen into her window had I wanted to–but we did bond over our love for cats and over our shared anxiety disorders.  Some people bond over things like religion or sports or music or television shows but, no, not us; we bonded over cats and anxiety disorders.  You’d think one of us would have stopped to think, “Hey, someone here may be one card short of a deck.”

Towards the end of that semester, I was assaulted on my way back from one of my meetings for a peer-to-peer crisis hotline I volunteered for.  I managed to anger my attacker by fighting back, and in return for the broken nose I gave him, he broke two of my ribs and cracked another one–interest, I guess.  We sufficiently made breathing an exercise in and of itself for each other.

Anyway, I didn’t really like going out after dark for a while.  Having someone with me didn’t really make much of a difference the first several days.  Shortly after that, I decided it was ridiculous and I needed to get over that fear immediately.  Being an insomniac and fearing the dark are two things which cannot coexist.  Of course, that evening I realized I had missed dinner in the dining hall, and I didn’t have any food in my room.  I hadn’t quite meant immediately, but it would seem there was no time like the present, and so I dove in.

I went outside to head to a little grill on campus, and who other but Jessica was walking in my direction heading back to her brownstone.  She saw me and then, with her characteristic sensitivity and tact, said, “Where are you going?”

Of course, I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider myself one of them.  I absolutely did, though at times I wondered if I was the only one aware of my precarious mental state.

Each class became more difficult to tolerate.  Any sympathy I had felt towards Katie quickly disappeared and was replaced with a nearly irresistable urge to yell, “Persistence doesn’t always pay off.  Get a clue and move on!  Fishing season’s over!”  And Melissa–well, the fact that I hadn’t beaten her within an inch of her life and then taken that inch is either a credit to my self-restraint or proof of the existence of God and divine intervention.  I cannot begin to count the number of times violent scenarios swept through my mind, and those were unbid, that’s not even counting the times I consciously thought about it.

Now, you may be thinking that this doesn’t sound like me, and that’s because it wasn’t (though I’d argue that it’s perhaps closer to the real me, regardless of what everyone else thinks or says).  I was suffering from a bad case of clinical depression, and despite the various creative violent scenarios infiltrating my mind, I was falling faster and faster.

The crisis finally came to a very painful peak in the middle of November in the evening.  I won’t detail what happened, just as I have failed to detail the events leading up to it, because now is not the right time, but it was rather shocking for anyone who knows me.  Not many people even knew, as it was kept quiet, but it was one of those events that make you see things differently.

I fell behind in my studies, and I received extensions while I worked furiously to catch back up with all my work.

One night, I had a question about a paper that was due in Abnormal Psych the next day, but it was late at night and I didn’t talk to anyone outside of class.  I didn’t even have any way to contact anyone outside of class.  However, I had finally found out Jessica’s and Nick’s last names, so I searched them on Facebook to try to find contact information.  This was a great idea until I realized I couldn’t quite remember Jessica’s last name.  I knew I’d recognize it if I heard it, but I was drawing blanks.  I knew it was long and Italian and sounded like a barnyard animal, but that was all I could remember.   So, I looked up Nick and found his IM screen name.  I messaged him, and waited…and waited…and waited…

I was in trouble and on a tight schedule, so I decided to find Jessica in a roundabout way.  I finally did, and I noted the screen name she had listed, then I messaged her.  I waited ten minutes before I realized that I may have to come up with a Plan B, because Plan A was turning out to be Plan Ain’t Workin’ Out.  I thought about whose names in that psych ward of a class I could remember, and the only other person’s last name I could remember was Melissa’s.  Fantastic.

I looked Melissa up, found her screen name and blissfully noted that she was online.  I spent a few minutes destroying my pride so that I could then destroy my dignity, and then I messaged her.  Of course, as luck would have it, she didn’t respond.  Plan B quickly turned into Plan Backfired.

Just as I was trying to come up with Plan C..over Up Cluelessness Over Assignment With Unadulterated Brilliance So Teacher Won’t Fail Me, an IM window popped up on my screen.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Despite the size of the university and even the Psychology department, it was likely you’d share a class with a fellow Psych major more than once beore you graduate.  In fact, you would know most of them by appearance if not by name beore your time was over.  Yet, still knowing that, I was surprised to see Jessica.  In a way, it was frustrating.  You see, in my mind, I had already said farewell to her nearly a year ago.  To see her sitting in that classroom once again seemed to render my closure pointless and mildly ridiculous.  Her presence mocked me, and rather than focusing on the fact that it was my notoriously pernicious inner voice mocking me instead of the oblivious girl in front of me or even smiling over the good fortune of seeing her again, I thought about how good my internal bon voyage speech to her had been last year, and I found myself feeling disgruntled because I was going to have to do it again in December and how am I going to top the last one?  And–wait–what if this isn’t the last class I have with her?  Exactly how many times am I going to have to do this?

I took up my normal seat.  A few minutes later, Nick walked into the room, and before my mind could comment upon that tree looking awfully familiar, I decided that being green was good for my sanity–I would recycle.  Everyone does it.  If people can send the same Christmas card and thank-you note to everyone they know, I can recycle goodbye speeches.  I allowed myself to smile at the disingenuous sincerity sheathed by the practice, and just as soon as they began, my internal musings took a backseat and I found myself pleased with this unexpected turn of events.  And thus began an eventful semester of Abnormal Psych.

Abnormal Psych turned out to be a better fit for all three of us.  While I had found the material of Developmental Psych interesting, I found the material of Abnormal Psych riveting.  Certainly, Abnormal Psych aligned more closely with my interests, and as it turned out, the same held true for Nick and Jessica.

The class was taught by a Ph.D. student who was completing his dissertation (he successfully defended it in December before the end of the semester).  Jessica thought he was cute.  I thought she needed to make an appointment with her optometrist.

Our semester was littered with interesting characters.  There was a girl–Katie, I’ll call her–who had long brown hair, a large mole and a large presence.  She liked to take control of conversations, she liked to talk loudly and she liked Nick.  She especially seemed to like to take control of conversations between her group and ours so that she could talk loudly to Nick.  It was somewhat awkward to witness her fumbling her way through conversations with Nick, and I confess I felt somewhat sorry for her, though probably not as sorry as I felt for the rest of us having to listen to conversation after conversation about classes and material week after week after week and please just ask him out for coffee already so either he can decline your interest or you can go and realize IT’S NOT GOING TO WORK OUT.  Of course, while I felt mild irritation over reenacting Waiting for Godot every class, I also felt bad for Katie because Nick seemed to be oblivious and uninterested.  Katie didn’t seem like the oblivious musician’s type, but then again, I couldn’t really see him with anyone.  Jessica, however, seemed to be resting somewhere between “this annoying [girl] is getting on my nerves” and “if she so much as looks over here and interrupts again, I’m jamming this pen in her carotid.”  Watching Jessica watching Katie with an annoyed glare while Katie was watching Nick with puppy eyes while Nick zoned out provided a lot of entertainment, though.

(For the record, Jessica was not infatuated with Nick, or at least my impression was that she wasn’t, but I never actually inquired.)

Then there was another girl, a girl who to this day gets referenced in conversations.  I’ll call her Melissa.  She was…fascinating–you know, in a train wreck sort of way.  The first day of class, she came in huffing.  She sat down in the front row, two aisles over from me.  She wore a sweatshirt and carried a powder blue Coach bag.  Her dirty dirty blond hair (not a typo) was pulled up in a ponytail.  She was wearing glasses and chewing on…actually, to this day, I haven’t figured that one out.  It was a constant habit of hers, always having something in her mouth to suck on.  Were I to guess, I’d say it was the stick portion of a sucker, but it was plastic.  Her voice was low, somewhat gravely and nasaly, and it gave the impression of being whiny, an impression which turned out to be more a fact than anything else.

You see, Melissa, too, liked sitting in the same seat every class.  She, however, could not stand someone else sitting in her seat even for one class.  Jessica once sat in her seat, and Melissa informed Jessica that she always sits there, she needs to sit there (she gave a rather flimsy reason, but I can’t remember what) and asked Jessica to move, though “asked” may be a bit kind.

Melissa had gone up to our instructor after class the first day to introduce herself and talk.  She frequently raised her hand to speak during class, often sidelining the lecture–much to everyone’s dismay–and causing class to run over or us to fall behind in the material.  It got to the point where our instructor was even annoyed by her constant and unnecessary interruptions.  Of course, that was on the days she was in class.  She frequently was absent (or late when she did come) and taking extensions and, ultimately, an incomplete.  I’m not certain what health affliction she suffered from–she had told our instructor at the beginning of the semester she had arthritis–but having other classes with her after this one, I learned that this behavior was standard for her but that the affliction would change with each instructor, and taking incompletes at the end of the semester was not unusual for her.

Within a few weeks into the semester I got the impression I was spending four hours a week in a room full of future psychiatric patients rather than counselors.

Throughout the course of the semester, I would talk to the pair, much of it pertaining to course material, but also occasionally delving into other topics (much of which I couldn’t add to but enjoyed listening on in any case).  When groups were necessary for discussions, I would merge into their group.  When test days came, I would sympathize with them about the difficulty of the material prior to the start of the class.  When exams were returned, well, I hid my A in my notebook and empathized with them over grades.  I didn’t want to lie to them, but I also didn’t want to reveal my grade to them for fear of resentment.  After all, I was the only freshman in the class, and I had one of the highest grades in a class that was graded on a bell curve.  I may have been new to the college thing, but I had enough sense to know that most people wouldn’t be congratulating me when they found out the freshman was responsible for them getting a B-.  So, whenever they shared their scores and asked me how I fared I would respond with, “I did ok, I guess” and immediately change the topic.

One time, though, I dropped my exam face up before I could hide it, and Jessica saw my 48/50.  Although she nor I said anything about it, I did get a fleeting glare in my direction.  Fortunately, our easy classroom companionship continued on as before with the only difference being that she and Nick asked me questions about the material from time to time.  I felt more secure in our acquaintance that I no longer hid my understanding of the material, but I never discussed my grades.

And so the semester continued.

After the final exam at the end of the semester, we went our separate ways.  While I knew I would miss their–ahem–colorful conversations, I also knew that they were little more than temporary distractions for me to make the time pass by more easily.  I hadn’t given any thought to contacting them outside of class, and I didn’t even know their last names anyway.  They were drastically different than myself, and to assume our conversations were something more than they were wouldn’t be beneficial for anyone.  So, I smiled fondly and mentally bid farewell to the passing ships that were Legs and Red Dynamo.

You can imagine my surprise when, a year later, I walked into that same classroom yet again and saw Jessica sitting two seats up from my usual spot.

I can’t quite recall what the two were discussing at the time, only that it was a heavier subject and it had to do with relationships–specific and personal relationships.  Now, I am normally extremely well-mannered and mindful of etiquette, especially around strangers, and even if I weren’t, I still would have had the sense to know that intruding into a conversation of that nature would be inappropriate.  Yet that is exactly what I did.  I don’t know why I was unable to stop myself from speaking, but I had the desire to make that girl smile, and before I knew it my mouth was spouting out a sentence so awkward and fatuous (albeit memorable) that I was reeling over it for days.

“Boyfriends are good for having someone to harass.”

Boyfriends are good for having someone to harass?  Well, congratulations, nimwit, way to crash and burn.  Glad to see eloquence is working out for you, because, you know, self-restraint and proper social protocol are going so well.  Need I even mention the irony of this occurring in a psychology class?  Smile.  Maybe she’ll realize your comment was facetious and that you’re not really an emotionally unstable psychopath who eavesdrops.  Nevermind that you are.  Charm them.  Smile!  Fix. This. NOW.

The facial expressions I met seemingly adorned confusion, amusement and curiosity.  If I’m being honest here, those were the emotions I was hoping they were exhibiting.  Whether they actually were, I don’t know.  I didn’t really care, because neither looked ready to bolt to the other side of the room, and that’s what mattered.  I took the opportunity afforded me by my unorthodox icebreaker to properly introduce myself.  I learned that Legs’ name was Nick and Red Dynamo’s name was Jessica.  As suspected, they were both older than me–sophomores.

As we made conversation, I came to learn that Nick was, in fact, a musician.  Both seemed to abhor the class and the professor, finding the material and her explanations both boring and confounding.  Prior to engaging the pair in conversation I was aware that they weren’t my normal–nor preferred, if I’m being honest–company, but I liked them.  There was something refreshing about Red Dynamo’s–er, Jessica’s–unabashed bluntness.  While I couldn’t really see myself spending any time outside of class with either of them, I was pleased to have some friendly faces in class if for no other reason than it would make the semester go a lot more smoothly.

I left that day feeling pleased that, although things got off to a rough start, I took the initiative and met two very interesting and kind people.  I made a promise to myself that I would try to talk to them more.

It was the fall semester of 2005, my first semester of college.  I had entered with a year’s worth of AP credits, but I, like most freshmen, did not get into any of the classes I wanted to take.  An upperclassman informed me that many students drop classes in the days leading up to and following the start of the semester, so I kept a close eye on the online registration pages the next several days.  To my surprise and joy, three seats in Developmental Psychology were available.  Having come in with AP Psych credit, I had the prerequisite for the course covered, and I quickly added it to my schedule and dropped the other Psych course I had signed up for.

When the first day of class came, I was nervous.  It was fall semester, and the class had filled up quickly.  I knew how lucky I was to get a spot, and I also knew that it was unlikely there would be any other freshmen in the class.  Besides the obvious prerequisite they would have had to fulfill in high school, they too would have had to stalk the online registration website around the clock.  I was not so nervous about not being able to keep up with everyone else, though there was that niggling self-doubt lurking in the back of my mind, but I was painfully aware of the shift in the scales with regards to experience.  These people had been doing the college year for at least a year; they knew what to expect far better than I did.  I was walking blind.

As per usual, I chose a spot three rows back and slight off to the left [of the professor; to the right for the students].  This seat would become the seat that I sit in for every class located in that particular room (of which where would be many) or the remainder of my undergraduate years.  Several classes into the semester I began to notice people near me sitting in roughly the same seats each class.  Most of them were sitting by someone they knew from another Pysch class.  There were a girl and a boy who always sat in front of me, and their conversations were always colorful to say the least.  I would overhear them talking while I read or edited my to-do list or my planner, all the while silently amused by the conversations they had.

It was probably a week or two into the semester before I ever actually looked up from my notebook or book to see the two strangers who unwittingly entertained me each Tuesday and Thursday morning.  Prior to that day, I had only ever seen the backs of their heads since I was always preoccupied when they walked into class.  The boy was tall and lanky, looking as though he had just rolled out of bed and thrown on some clothes.  His hair bordered on dark blond and light brown, and it was mashed down on his head–bed hair.  He exuded a laid-back attitude and looked like he might be a musician or a skateboarder.  His physical appearance echoed the mental image I had conjured up based upon his voice and his conversations.

The girl, on the other hand, caught me by surprise.  She was very beautiful, intimidatingly so.  She possessed the kind of physique that other females pine after and became self-conscious when in the vicinity of.  She was buxom and curvaceous.  Were it not for her somewhat dwarfed stature and choice of attire one might have mistook her for a model.  As it was, her clothing and makeup seemed to be in direct contradiction to the appearance of the individual wearing them.  She looked like she could have been a punk rock model, her outward appearance seeming to be carefully chosen to convey to the world that, despite her size, her face and her figure, she was not some bimbo to be trifled with.  Her shoulder-length artificial red hair only added to the fiesty exterior she presented.

I inwardly chuckled.  Here was a young woman who was graced with a polished natural beauty who willingly created for herself a “rough around the edges” look.  Yet, ironically, doing so seemed to draw out her beauty more.  She was a walking paradox, and I was thoroughly amused.

That day before class I paid closer attention to the pair’s conversation.

So.  I have a blog.  In fact, I have an internet presence.  While I make no effort to hide that fact, I do not openly discuss it either.  I do try to keep the two separate, mainly for reason of privacy, this blog really being the only exception.  That being said, most people in my life do not venture here to read my inconsequential drivel.  Jessica knows all about my internet haunts, and she’s perhaps the only person who does.  Likewise, I know about many of hers.  I read her blog, and she occasionally reads mine.

Of course, I had been under the impression that she sporadically reads mine, and so I thought my post regarding Operation: Lindsay Barbie would be safe from her prying eyes.  This proved to be untrue the other day when, while we were in the grocery store, Jessica turns to me with a rather smug smile and says, “So, I hear I’m amazing and talented.”  I was somewhat confused by this and asked her what she was talking about, and she said that she even heard that others would love for her to do their hair.  That’s when it clicked in my head and I groaned, because, like me, Jessica is a master at beating a dead horse.  (Oh, you would be terribly impressed with our Ranting Skills.)  Now, see, this always puts us in an interesting situation, because I suffer from this little thing called pride–perhaps you’ve heard of it?–and Jessica suffers from the aforementioned horse beating.  Jessica knows she did a great job.  I know she’s done a great job, but I know that if I come out and compliment her in the manner I’d like and that she deserves, she will then start to get ideas and use this time as a reason to trust her in the future which is just another way to say that she wants free reign to do whatever she wants.  I love her, and I trust her, but that frightens me.

So, I was firm and told her that she did do a good job, but all those wonderful comments (which, OK, I agree with you) went straight to her head.  Right before I had agreed to go get a manicure with her, I videotaped Jessica promising that she wouldn’t make me do anything girly with her ever again (unless I want to) if I went with her to get a manicure.  (I would post the video, but I realized after the fact that I referred to something as a Star Trek peace sign when it is really the Vulcan salute.  I knew this, but somehow misspoke, and that is embarrassing.  Plus, what if a Trekkie comes across my site and watches that and has a heart attack?)  She used all that praise as a reason for her promise to be vetoed and invalid.  Excuse me?

It’s ok, though.  She did do a great job, and I do trust her implicitly.  I just have a healthy fear of my roommate, and now I have a paranoid fear of her thanks in part to comments by readers like you.

Feel free to skip to the end for the pictures.

The beginning of this story goes back to 6 March 1986, the fateful day when Jessica was born.  That is really where all of this started–her birth.  Now, fastforward to the end of February of 2009.  Jessica’s birthday was coming up, and I wasn’t quite sure what to get her.  I was leaving on spring break the day of her birthday, so I felt rather guilty that I wouldn’t be there to begin with.  I was trying to decide what to get her for her birthday, but I figured I would ask her to see if there was anything she’d like to do or anything she’d particularly like before I began scheming.  She said that she didn’t want anything, she just wanted everyone to go out for her birthday.  Well, shoot.  Seeing as that was an impossibility and she was being particularly obstinate on the matter of gifts, I struck out on my own to think.

I figured the best place to start was to reflect upon our friendship and what I knew about Jessica.  The most blatantly obvious fact of our friendship is that our personalities are very, very different.  She has completely different interests.  That really didn’t help me out any.  Except then I realized that it did.  I thought upon how disheartening it has been for me in the past when people always overlooked me and what I like and instead go for what they would like or what they think I should like.  I have always known that I am somewhat unique (read: somewhat of a freak), and while I have no desire to make anyone change, it’s always nice for someone to do something I like that they maybe necessarily would not choose because it shows that they want to share that with me.  There are a lot of things that Jessica likes to do that I am not a fan of, and I always try to weasel out of it.  I do this only because I know that she has other people who share those interests, but it occurred to me that maybe it would be special for her if I shared in that with her since I don’t normally.

I came up with the idea of Lindsay Certificates.  I would give her certificates for certain activities to take place at a time of her choosing that she could redeem whenever she wanted.  I just had to decide what those activities would be.  I decided to offer her two hours of television viewing (or one movie) wherein I could not complain at all.  She loves awful VH1 shows, and I knew that’s what she’d choose.  She threw that card down immediately upon receiving it.  Another one was for a full day of shopping.  Another one was for a day of playing Lindsay Barbie, and I gave her two or three blank ones that allow her to pick the activity.

Lest you think I am entirely foolish, I did put parameters.  I chose my wording carefully, and I made certain there were loopholes.  For me, of course.  After I gave Jessica her birthday gift, she had a cat-ate-the-canary grin, and I knew I was in for trouble.  However, I knew it made her happy.  She has said more than once that it’s the best birthday present she’s ever received.  Upon contemplation, I don’t know how I’ll ever trump that in the future.

She occasionally threatens me with using one of them, but other than the day she received them, she hasn’t used any save for the television one.  In the middle of the week, though, she comes into the living room and asks me what my plans are for the following day after work.  I tell her that I have none.  She then proceeds to drop two cards on my lap while she stands above me grinning.  I quirk an eyebrow and then pick up the notecards.  They were Lindsay Certificates, two Lindsay Certificates to be exact.  One for shopping and one for Lindsay Barbie.  Two.  At once.  I had never anticipated that she would try to redeem two at once, and I was taken aback.  I was sputtering out my words while shaking my head no.  I was trying to come up with a valid excuse, any excuse, only to realize that I already told her that I don’t have plans and that, according to the card, that and money were my only available reasons for decline.  Plainly put, I was between a rock and a hard place.  I tried to use the money thing, but she said that I didn’t have to buy anything when we went shopping and that as far as the Lindsay Barbie thing went, she had it covered.

At that moment, I was torn between being proud and being annoyed.  Part of me was proud because she played her hand well.  She knows me well enough to anticipate my response and ask me my plans first before throwing those cards out there.  She wanted to go shopping the next day, and when we got home from that, she wanted to dye my hair and cut it.  I…mildly panicked.  I tried to convince her to just trim up my bangs, but she said she had ideas.

The next day, she came home.  She had had a rough day, and being the good friend I am, I tried to convince her that staying home and watching Gilmore Girls in our pajamas would be a good idea.  No such luck.  She tried to get me to leave, and I was reluctant to say the least.  I kept trying to buy time, but then she unplugged my laptop.  I had just plugged in Little Napoleon to charge the lifeless battery, and then she unplugged him and I check and see that I have two minutes until he powers down again.  She smirks and asks me if I’m ready to go now, and I finally give in.

Walking out to the car, she says, “So, I’ve stooped to a new low.”  I look at her like she’s grown a second head and respond with, “NO KIDDING.”  She just bursts out laughing and then says, “No, I mean, I’ve joined a group online so I can meet other people who play RAGE.”  (It’s a card game that she’s been playing since she was twelve–akin to Magic the Gathering, I think, but I don’t know anything about either one)  I’m not entirely sure how that’s relevant to this story other than to point out that she held no remorse over basically shutting my laptop down in the middle of my using it and yet feels ashamed of joining an online group to meet people who share a similar interest.  Messed up priorities much?

Anyway, we shop.  When we arrive at the mall, I sit there playing with my hands.  She opens her door.  I keep staring at my hands.  She informs me that it’s time to shop.  I mutter something about that meaning I have to get out of the car, and she smiles and reaches across me and opens the door for me.  She’s kind that way, opening doors for me and practically pushing me out.  She’s somewhat merciful and we’re not there for more than two hours or so.  Then we stop by CVS so she can get hair cutting shears.  I had thought she was joking about the hair thing, but apparently not.  When we get home, she breaks out the dye and gets started on dying both of our hair.  I pull out Lady Chatterley’s Lover while she puts the dye in my hair, and I continue reading while we wait for it to set and she starts fixing pancakes for dinner.  We rinse out the dye and then shower, and I put on grungy clothes (I do have some) and wrap my hair in a towel.  The pancakes are ready at this point, and while I’m grabbing some, her phone rings.  It’s one of her friends, a friend who knows about the Lindsay Barbie certificate.  She gets off the phone, and I sigh as I turn towards her and ask how long I have until her friend gets here.  She laughs and asks if she’s that obvious.  I figure it’s a rhetorical question and answer only by rolling my eyes.

About the time we finish eating our pancakes, her friend arrives and they comb my hair out and start talking amongst themselves as to what they plan on doing.  Jessica’s friend wants to cut my hair much shorter than Jessica does, and I intercede only to say that I don’t want it too short and that I’d like to be able to pull my hair up if I need to.  (Read: If it looks awful.  Going into this, I told Jessica that if she made me look awful I would wake her up at five o’clock every morning for a month with U2 songs.  She hates U2.  She also hates early.)  I go back to reading my book while they snip and comment about how much hair I have.  I don’t really hear what they’re saying.  The only noise I really heard while I was reading was snip! snip! snip! I felt like I was living the female equivalent of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.”  When they do the front of my hair and my bangs, I am forced to put the book down.  I close my eyes.  Jessica tells me to look at how much hair is in the bag, and I refuse, knowing that if I look at how much hair is in that bag, I will freak out.

Jessica’s friend asked me a question at some point, but I didn’t answer.  Jessica told her that I probably wasn’t paying attention because I was reading.  I momentarily find myself thinking how much I love her for knowing that I don’t pay attention when I read, but then I remind myself that she’s cutting my hair, and an awful lot.  She is going to town on the layers with that razor in her hand, and I momentarily feel like a shrub.  I mentally chuckle.  By this point, I’d equated my experience with a Poe story and a shrub, and I wonder how it was the shrub analogy and not the Poe thing that caused me to question my sanity.

Then they decide to do makeup.  Bwah?  Why, I don’t know, because I’m just going to wash it off and go to bed, but they seem to enjoy the Lindsay Barbie thing, and apparently this is part of it.  They realize that I actually have a decent amount of makeup, I just really don’t use it so much.  I sat patiently through that and was pondering about how embarrassing this whole thing is.  I am twenty-two years old, and here are two young women using me as their Barbie doll.  They enjoy it, though, and the smile on Jessica’s face is undeniable.  She’s happy, and I’m the cause of that, even if I was an insufferable prat about it at first.  I like seeing her happy, and I figure that the damage is more than worth it.

Of course, I hadn’t seen myself at this point, and they actually did a really great job.  It took me a day to get used to seeing myself and be able to decide, but I do like it.  At the end of the evening, they both thank me for allowing them to play Barbie on me and tell me how much they enjoyed themselves.

The next day, Jessica comes home with another huge smile and says, “I have a great idea!”  My smile immediately disappears and it placed by what turns out to be very visibly loud concern.  Unfortunately for me, Jessica notices this.  She just smiles more and laughs a bit, then she asks me what’s wrong.  I try to lovingly tell her that those words rarely ever exude comfort coming from her, but that just makes her smile more.  We then proceed to negotiate for about half an hour which then resulted to my acquiescing to her over her brilliant idea.  Her brilliant idea was to go get manicures together.  She does this once or twice a month, and she pointed out that technically, it was still a “day” of Lindsay Barbie since twenty-four hours were not up, and she said that she would pay and she pouted and downright begged and I couldn’t say no.  So, I went, and I let her pick out my color, too, because  I like seeing her smile.

All in all, everything turned out extremely well.  I made her happy, and it actually turned out pretty well for me, too.  I guess it just proved to be another exercise in trust.  I mean, after all, she exercises her trust in me every time she tries something I cook, and that has the potential to make her sick.  The really girly stuff is new to me, but it was not altogether unpleasant.  Jessica would say that statement is my way of saying that I enjoyed it somewhat but am too stubborn to say so out of fear of her going crazy with the knowledge.  And maybe she’d be right.

Ok, onto the pictures.  I know that’s what you really want.

This is a picture of what my natural hair color used to look like before:

Basically light brown with a lot of red and a bit of gold.

This is what it looks like now:

And before it flattens.  The new color and the green shirt show the green in my oddly colored eyes better.

After it flattens:

My hair curled that way on its own.  It doesn’t listen to me, it never has.

A silly picture:

My eyes.  So weird.  Not quite hazel, not quite brown, but somewhere in between with black specks accessorizing.

And, lest you think I’m vain (you would be correct), a I-just-woke-up picture where my ever changing eye color actually looks dirt brown:

And with glasses!  Maybe I finally removed that stick firmly situated in my posterior.

Ok, one last picture.  This one is to show my manicure, because Jessica was so pleased, and for some reason that makes me feel as if I should document the occasion for the world as proof:

It kind of looks white here, but it’s more of a pearlescent baby pink.

Pretty much everyone has loved my hair.  Jessica is ecstatic with the results, and I’m glad that everyone has appreciated her efforts.  The general consensus seems to be that I look much better with very dark brown hair (I know some of the pictures make it look black, but it’s not.  It’s almost black, but it’s definitely brown.).  It seems I should have been graced with my father’s hair coloring but wasn’t.  (Snarky Lindsay wants to say that if that’s the case, I should’ve dyed my hair grey.)  I’m frequently told I look like a miniature female version of him anyway, so I suppose it’s fitting.  If anyone asks, I just wanted to be like my daddy.