Hare tales
My best friend in college was a guy. We met our freshman year in an effort to hook up with each other's friends. He had a thing for a woman that lived down the hall from me. I was desperately in love with one of his friends. We agreed to do what we could to help each other out in each other's romantic endeavors.
As such things tend to go, our matchmaking turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.
But we became best friends. From two or so months into our freshman year until the end of our sophomore year, we were inseparable. We'd hang out in each other's dorm rooms. We'd go on adventures into LA together, since Marc had a car. We'd ski at Mt. Baldy. We'd go on spring break in Mazatlan. We made really, really awful fake IDs and used them at this crappy Mexican restaurant in Pomona called Tropical Mexicana to order pitcher after pitcher of very weak strawberry margaritas. We trolled thrift stores together to find our supplementary furniture for our dorm rooms (and I scored my favorite sofa of all time at a Salvation Army store for $25). We cleaned up after the LA riots together. We ate together. We studied together. We went to basketball games together. We never slept together.
Marc's uncle was an actor, and he did a spot for Edwards Cinema when we were freshmen. Edwards gave him a free movie pass for 1992-1993, and I guess that there were no Edwards franchises around his uncle, so he gave the movie pass to Marc. Marc and I went to see every single movie that came out that year and the following year, because the people at the theater didn't really care that we altered the pass.
When we were sophomores, Marc found the old pre-web, BBS bulletin boards, and he met this girl on line that lived in Boston. They were smitten. I remember arguing with him over and over and over again that you couldn't actually know someone that you'd never met before. He went to see her that year for spring break, and they had a good (for college anyways) run. Years later, I had to eat my words about online interaction because Marc found out about the Bronze, and how much I'd been sucked into a virtual life. (In the-world-is-a-tiny-tiny-place category, a Bronzer went to work as an intern in the same company that Marc worked. The co-workers discovered the Bronze because the Bronzer spent a lot of time at work there. They became fascinated with it.)
My dating life in college sucked because of this. Everyone thought I was dating Marc. Marc went to Cambridge and Washington, DC for our junior year, and I graduated a year early. When he was gone, everyone asked me how I was taking his absence. When he started dating someone in his senior year, everyone asked him when we'd broken up.
As is terrible, as tends to happen with time, distance and different experiences, Marc and I drifted apart. I think I saw him last when I was still in law school and going on interviews in DC. He was still working at the newspaper there, but he soon thereafter left for Chicago, I think, to get a masters in communication and then went to work for a fortune 500 company. He got into a few serious relationships shortly after college, and I think that they took up a lot of his time. I'm not the best correspondent in the world, so it takes effort to keep in touch with me if you're not part of my ordinary social circle (on-line or IRL). I googled him a few years ago, sent an e-mail to the address and got a reply, but we didn't really maintain communication. I assume he's still working at the same place, but I'm not sure.
I've been thinking a lot him in the last few days, though. My friend Katie, committing the cardinal Easter sin, came back from visiting her grandmother with two itty bitty baby bunnies. They're three weeks old and utterly adorable. She said she had to adopt them since there was a high likelihood that they'd get eaten otherwise. Farm bunnies tend not to survive too long. I cannot emphasize how cute these bunnies are.
When we were sophomores, Marc and I went to a pet store, and he left with Murphy, a lop eared brown and white spotted bunny. She was adorable. I insisted that I could build a hutch for her instead of spending money on a fancy store bought hutch. We went to Home Depot, and I bought boards, wire mesh, and some nails, and I built a wonderful little hutch for her. It wasn't special, but it was hers and it was made with love. We'd go to the quad with her and hang out, letting her hop along. I'd threaten to dye her purple or pink or yellow. She'd sit on my lap and her nose would go a million miles a minute. I learned to love a rabbit.
Katie is in the construction business. She's the one who is building the container houses. She's also the ringleader of the art car. So I imagine, while we're building the piano tonight, we'll also be building a very cool looking home for the baby bunnies. And I'll think of Marc and Murphy and the bunny house that I built for them, and I'll smile at those memories while I do so.
As such things tend to go, our matchmaking turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.
But we became best friends. From two or so months into our freshman year until the end of our sophomore year, we were inseparable. We'd hang out in each other's dorm rooms. We'd go on adventures into LA together, since Marc had a car. We'd ski at Mt. Baldy. We'd go on spring break in Mazatlan. We made really, really awful fake IDs and used them at this crappy Mexican restaurant in Pomona called Tropical Mexicana to order pitcher after pitcher of very weak strawberry margaritas. We trolled thrift stores together to find our supplementary furniture for our dorm rooms (and I scored my favorite sofa of all time at a Salvation Army store for $25). We cleaned up after the LA riots together. We ate together. We studied together. We went to basketball games together. We never slept together.
Marc's uncle was an actor, and he did a spot for Edwards Cinema when we were freshmen. Edwards gave him a free movie pass for 1992-1993, and I guess that there were no Edwards franchises around his uncle, so he gave the movie pass to Marc. Marc and I went to see every single movie that came out that year and the following year, because the people at the theater didn't really care that we altered the pass.
When we were sophomores, Marc found the old pre-web, BBS bulletin boards, and he met this girl on line that lived in Boston. They were smitten. I remember arguing with him over and over and over again that you couldn't actually know someone that you'd never met before. He went to see her that year for spring break, and they had a good (for college anyways) run. Years later, I had to eat my words about online interaction because Marc found out about the Bronze, and how much I'd been sucked into a virtual life. (In the-world-is-a-tiny-tiny-place category, a Bronzer went to work as an intern in the same company that Marc worked. The co-workers discovered the Bronze because the Bronzer spent a lot of time at work there. They became fascinated with it.)
My dating life in college sucked because of this. Everyone thought I was dating Marc. Marc went to Cambridge and Washington, DC for our junior year, and I graduated a year early. When he was gone, everyone asked me how I was taking his absence. When he started dating someone in his senior year, everyone asked him when we'd broken up.
As is terrible, as tends to happen with time, distance and different experiences, Marc and I drifted apart. I think I saw him last when I was still in law school and going on interviews in DC. He was still working at the newspaper there, but he soon thereafter left for Chicago, I think, to get a masters in communication and then went to work for a fortune 500 company. He got into a few serious relationships shortly after college, and I think that they took up a lot of his time. I'm not the best correspondent in the world, so it takes effort to keep in touch with me if you're not part of my ordinary social circle (on-line or IRL). I googled him a few years ago, sent an e-mail to the address and got a reply, but we didn't really maintain communication. I assume he's still working at the same place, but I'm not sure.
I've been thinking a lot him in the last few days, though. My friend Katie, committing the cardinal Easter sin, came back from visiting her grandmother with two itty bitty baby bunnies. They're three weeks old and utterly adorable. She said she had to adopt them since there was a high likelihood that they'd get eaten otherwise. Farm bunnies tend not to survive too long. I cannot emphasize how cute these bunnies are.
When we were sophomores, Marc and I went to a pet store, and he left with Murphy, a lop eared brown and white spotted bunny. She was adorable. I insisted that I could build a hutch for her instead of spending money on a fancy store bought hutch. We went to Home Depot, and I bought boards, wire mesh, and some nails, and I built a wonderful little hutch for her. It wasn't special, but it was hers and it was made with love. We'd go to the quad with her and hang out, letting her hop along. I'd threaten to dye her purple or pink or yellow. She'd sit on my lap and her nose would go a million miles a minute. I learned to love a rabbit.
Katie is in the construction business. She's the one who is building the container houses. She's also the ringleader of the art car. So I imagine, while we're building the piano tonight, we'll also be building a very cool looking home for the baby bunnies. And I'll think of Marc and Murphy and the bunny house that I built for them, and I'll smile at those memories while I do so.