Put on my blue suede shoes and I boarded the plane

To continue my series on my awesomely awesome cohorts, I thought I’d write this month about my former roommate, bridesmaid, and friend in all things labeled “guilty pleasure,” Carol. Carol is currently a lawyer in a swanky firm in Boston, but I met her back when she was a Brown University Research Assistant and wore jeans and tshirts to work (note: I’m sure she would still do this if she thought in a million years she’d get away with it). We shared apartments from September of 2007 until June of 2009, although I’m sure she would agree it felt like much longer than that, given all of the stories that came from that time and the things we still talk and groan about.

In keeping with the last post I made of this sort, here is a list of ten reasons (out of about a million) that Carol is the greatest.

1.     Summer Sisters

This is sort of roundabout, but here goes. I was in college when my friend Beth figured out that I had never read her all time favorite book, a little tome by the name of Summer Sisters by a young author you may have heard of named Judy Blume (yes, that Judy Blume). She lent me her copy, which I read over the course of a weekend, culminating in my locking myself in the upstairs bathroom so I could cry hysterically at the last chapter in peace. How does this relate to Carol? Well, here you go: the main character of Summer Sisters, Victoria, goes through your typical coming of age story (she has a crazy best friend, she has a ton of sex with a not super great guy, etc, etc), and when she goes to college, she moves into an apartment with a bunch of girls who she is not so sure about, but goes on to become extremely close with. They end up moving into new apartments together, they’re in each other’s weddings…long story short, they’re lifers. When I graduated college, I went about trying to find an apartment in Providence to move into and went to look at one which was already inhabited by four girls. My mother came to look at it with me and when we left, I mused aloud that perhaps I would move in with those girls and we would be like Victoria and her roommates in Summer Sisters and would find ways to stay in each others lives in one way or another over the years. I think I found that with Carol.

Side note: Carol also had not read Summer Sisters when I met her. I gave her a copy as a bridesmaid gift for being in my wedding. I still haven’t asked her about it, but I’ll do that one of these days.

2.     Rant Walks

Carol graduated from law school last summer and spent several months after graduation networking around the area in the hopes of finding a job. This meant she had a little free time here and there to hang out with me (and Liam). We ended up going on a lot of walks, during which we would half talk and half rant. About everything. Which brings me to my next point…

3.     There is no subject I would ever talk about that weirds her out.

It’s true. We don’t really talk about our sex lives, and we don’t really talk about our respective relationships (in a very in-depth way, anyway) but, so far, there is no subject I have come up with that makes her blush, make a face, or that she refuses to discuss. This includes medical issues. There is nothing that I can hear from a doctor that is too gross to tell Carol about. It might sound weird, but it is a very good quality for a friend to have. This is not to imply that I have a lot of weird, disgusting medical issues; it’s just that doctors don’t usually tell patients things that aren’t, in one way or another, yucky.

4.     Vocabulary

Carol has one of the greatest vocabularies of anyone I’ve ever known in real life. She is also the only person I know who makes up, and uses made-up words on the reg. She once used the words “vociferous” and “cray cray” in the same sentence. I had to look one of them up. I’m sure you can guess which one, but I’m not telling.

5.     I don’t have a fancy title for this one: she took me out for brunch for my birthday this year and when the waitress came to take our drink order, Carol asked for chocolate milk. I don’t know why I feel this should go on this list, but I think it’s the funniest, coolest thing ever.

6.     Spidey

Carol is a runner. She is a swimmer, too. She does yoga when she can and basically is a person who exercises. Weather permitting, she will wear stretchy pants to work out, which she says makes her feel like Spiderman. When we lived together at Ivy Street (the first apartment we shared), when she put them on to go work out, she would first stalk around our apartment, pretending to shoot webbing from her hands. I know it sounds like I’m talking about a five year old boy, here, but it was so, so much better than that. We called it “Spidey time,” and it is still my favorite time ever.

7.     Little Hands, Big Breasts

What does that mean, you ask? Oh, it’s just the self-assigned title of her (as yet unwritten) autobiography.

8.     The cleaning of the Methyl Street apartment

Our second apartment was a complete sty when we moved in; it had been vacated the morning of our move-in by three college aged boys who did not fulfill their lease agreement to clean the place before peacing out, and with our third roommate leaving on a pre-planned trip with friends to Spain, that left the cleaning duties to Carol and me. I cannot even begin to explain the state of that place when we got there (after staying up late into the night scrubbing our previous apartment as we believed would be done for us in our new one), but we cleaned it top to bottom and made it livable. Why do I include this story? I guess I’d just have to put it like this: some people fought together in Vietnam.

We cleaned that apartment.

9.     Caddie and Crank

About three months into knowing Carol, she started dating Kevin. They’ve been together ever since. Kevin is several years Carol’s senior, but you’d never know it—and I don’t mean that as an insult. He is a goofy, fun-loving nerd and I love him dearly. A few months ago we got together for ice cream on a night when Kurt had figured out some feature on his iPhone that could give one endless information about his or her name, including typical nicknames associated with it. For “Carol,” it listed, among others, “Caddie.” For Kevin, it listed “Crank.”

10. Here is another one without a fancy title: Never in my life have I met a smarter person with worse taste in television. And I say that lovingly. If you know me, you know why.

Well, there you have it: ten reasons you wish Carol was YOUR former roommate, bridesmaid and friend. Well, get in line. I’m sure there is one! And I didn't even mention that she hails from Memphis, studied Linguistics as an undergrad, and once locked herself in her office to learn the dance to that song "Superman" by Soulja Boy. She is just an American treasure.

:::edit:::

I posted this one year ago on Carol's birthday, but chickened out on sending it to her as a gift and instead left it up by its lonesome to be found by chance. This year, I figured I'd man up and send it to her, so I have to add the following:

1. Carol gave Liam two train engines from the Thomas and Friends line for his birthday this year. One named Kevin (which you may recall is the name of her boyfriend), and the other named Salty. "Because I'm salty!"

2. I learned this past weekend that, as a child, Carol had an imaginary friend, the same way a lot of us did. Carol's friend's name? Oh, it was Rachel Turner. Hilarious.

3. Since my last posting of this entry, we both read Heavier than Heaven, a biography about Kurt Cobain, We are both similarly obsessed with him, albeit having never been into Nirvana. We have tentative plans to watch the new HBO biography on him and cry.

4. Carol's boyfriend Kevin just had his 40th birthday. How did they decide to celebrate 40 years of Kevin? By going to Montreal to see Rush, of course.

5, In the year since this was first posted, the world lost Caro's dad, Mike. He was adopted, served in Vietnam in the band as a trumpet player, and taught her how to dance, He had a lot of foibles as well, but he remains kind of a legend for anybody who knows Carol. Who, it must be stated, is an excellent dancer.