Story #26 - PDF, aka My Friend Kristin

Hi everybody! This week's story is more special than the others - it's my 26th story! This means that I am halfway through my challenge! Wow! It's been fun. I have to say, I'm more surprised to realize that this means I've been writing my blog for half a year, now. That's pretty intense!

This week's story is a tribute to my friend Kristin. Her birthday was on July 29th. Happy birthday, Kristin!

Title: PDF, aka My Friend Kristin
Warnings: none (tomfoolery?)
Summary: To my friend Kristin - the crazy times we've had!
Length: ~1,300 words
Notes: First person point of view, past tense. Genre is tribute.

PDF, aka My Friend Kristin

            Last Friday was my friend Kristin’s birthday. You may have already heard of her – she is the “tortured friend” from the story I wrote about my friend Natalie. I’ve known Kristin since about eighth grade, and we’ve been good friends ever since then. We have lots of crazy inside jokes and strange moments that I will attempt to describe here. Happy (belated) birthday, Kristin! You rock!

*

            Kristin is super nice, really funny, very generous, a worrier, slightly neurotic, and crazy in the best way. She’s also short, like me, which led us to one of our first major plots to take over the world. When we get older, we are going to write and film a documentary called “Little People in a Big World” about how tough it is for short people. One scene is going to be about how expensive being short is, because you have to buy stools to reach things and go to the tailor to get your jeans hemmed.

            I think our documentary is going to be a bestseller.

*

            In sophomore year, I had nearly every class with Kristin. The only class we didn’t have together was math. You’d think that having so many classes with one person would make you tired of them, but I never got tired of talking to Kristin. She can make me laugh like no one else! We had a lot of fun together. One memorable moment was in yoga. We made up “gangster names” for the fun of it. We decided on J Strut for me and Pop Diddy Flash (or PDF, coincidentally) for Kristin.

            Believe it or not, these names have stuck. That’s not to say that everyone calls us by our gangster names. But sometimes we call each other by our gangster names, and that’s what counts.

            Other fun times in yoga involve trying to talk in British accents (sadly, mostly a failure, although together we could get a pretty good vocabulary of British slang and curse words), trying to bark and meow by inhaling as we said the word “woof” or “meow” (it didn’t sound realistic, but it sure was funny), and attempting to speak to each other through the sides of our mouth and not end up laughing (which we generally failed at, but had fun anyway).

*

            We had a lot of fun in French class as well. I’ve had French with Kristin for the past two years. I can think of two funny stories from sophomore year.

            One is the sad story of Sexy the Goldfish (cracker, not an actual fish). While we were walking to French, I was trying to finish my original Goldfish. I tried to give my last one to Kristin, but she was too nice to take it, and eventually through a tug-of-war of sorts, the Goldfish got smashed. For no particular reason we decided to name the poor deceased Goldfish Sexy. Of course, this led to a particularly clever pun – “We need to bring Sexy back!” That got us laughing for a while.

            Another funny story (or stories) was watching movies in French. For some reason, movies are funnier in French, and they’re always funnier when I watch them with Kristin. We watched Mission Impossible sophomore year and Spiderman junior year. We still need to watch Spiderman 2 (or was it 3?) and Far and Away, the funniest movie ever.

*

            Another interesting event that happened in French was the creation of the creature that today we just named Justin. I challenged Kristin to draw something scary. She’s a great artist, but she always draws these adorable things so I said she couldn’t draw anything frightening. I asked her to draw a serial killer.

            She draw a weird creature with a large afro and a flaming tail, claws, and teeth. It had huge eyes and, of course, it was rather cute, in a it-grows-on-you sort of way. This serial killer became our “creature.” Kristin even gave me a tote bag with the creature on it and “J Strut” written on it for my birthday.

            And now, as of today, the creature is named Justin. Justin rocks!

*

            Kristin and I once spent a whole bus drive – I’m not sure how long it was, but it must’ve been about two hours – arguing about sandwiches. We were on a school field trip, going back, and somehow we got onto the topic of peanut butter, and whether peanut butter was sweet or savory. I said that it was savory; Kristin said that it was sweet. We “discussed” this all the way back home, and still didn’t manage to come to an agreement. We still like to “argue” about it now.

            I have to say, you don’t meet many people that you can argue about sandwiches for two hours with. And then still have stuff to talk about afterward.

            Still, I have to say it, Kristin – peanut butter is SAVORY.

*

            In sophomore year, we had to put on a group play where we made up our own characters and script. My character, Carlos, was a bit of a creep. (I was having fun with my writing even then.) Carlos’s famous line was, “ZOUNDS! That’s the girl!” Kristin could say this in the most hilarious, creepy/funny voice, which we soon dubbed the “Carlos voice”. She would use it while we were writing our play, and we would all fall over laughing.

            Sadly, by the time junior year came around Kristin had forgotten how to do The Voice. But it’ll live on in my memory as a funny experience and great time.

            P.S. To all who may have once wondered whether zounds was a word – it does not get a red squiggly line in spell check, so it MUST be a word.

*

            One other fun “argument” I have with Kristin is over the potential emo-ness of either of us. In freshman year, I had P.E. with Kristin, and she liked to sit on the railing outside and lean back in forth in what I thought was quite a dangerous manner. So I decided that she must be “emo” (especially because it’s always the quiet ones… and she’s got a killer-painful high five…). When I told Kristin this, she denied it vehemently. As if that would fool me! Even worse, she claimed that I was the emo one, and that I had admitted to being emo. Naturally, I denied this.

            The question on who is emo continues to this day. I did confess in Kristin’s yearbook this year that I didn’t really think she was emo… but I can always take that back if I have to! (And I will. Be afraid… be very afraid.)

*

            As you can see, Kristin and I have had many fun times together. And I hope to have many more! Kristin, you’re a truly great friend. I’m glad I got to know you! I’m sure that we’ll have classes together next year, and we’ll have fun laughing and talking and stressing in those, too. Oh, and I know there’s a lot of things I didn’t mention here – like our Ceramics table (so much fun – maybe that’ll have to wait for another story!) and other things that I can’t think of right now. But we’ve had so many fun times that it’s impossible to fit everything in! But hopefully this has left you with some fond(ish) memories. J

            In closing, I’ll just leave everyone with a quote from the Inspirational Quotes book that Kristin and I are going to publish someday: “Life is much brighter when you take off your sunglasses.” – J Strut