Remember that time in 1996 when you picked up the dying fern in my apartment (the one given to me by that loser ex-guy person who broke my heart a thousand times) and heartlessly dragged it outside to the dumpster, telling me in no uncertain terms that it was TIME TO MOVE ON?

Remember that other time in 1997 when Lubbock was snowed-in (two whole inches of snow, hoo-boy), and there was a dead mouse in my stove, and no one could drive on the roads to come get rid of the mouse for me, so you talked me through the removal and disposal of the mouse on the phone and didn't act like I was insane?

That's why I've always liked you. You're a hardcore friend like that.

You're the kind of person who will answer the phone at 3 a.m. if I call twenty times in a row just to tell me to leave you the hell alone. Then you'll answer the phone again on the twenty-first ring and say, "Yes, of course I'll come and pick up you up, you moron. Don't talk to any strangers, and for god's sake, keep your clothes on."

I remember the first time I thought you were the coolest. It was in October of 1995, and you and I worked together in the cafe at Barnes & Noble. You had just gotten home from spending a year in England, and you were still all exchange-student-brainwashed-core, still speaking with a slight British accent like that was totally normal. You still called people wankers, I think. It was cute.

One day you stuck your tongue out at me over the espresso machine. You had your tongue pierced. That freaked me out a lot - I had never seen a piercing like that before. Damn, I thought, this girl is serious. Seriously serious. But cool. Very, very cool, in a black 16-hole Doc Martens kind of way.

5 months later I got my own tongue pierced. Just like you. You took me to get it pierced, even, and took me to the grocery store later to buy all the healing supplies. When the girl at the counter asked me if a piece of my tongue fell out when they pierced it, you looked at her with the appropriate level of disgust. You rocked.

When my rental house caught on fire, you helped me move my smoke-filled belongings out into a new house. When Jeanmarie moved back to New York, you and I drove her to the airport together, and then drove home in sad silence. When I left Lubbock to join AmeriCorps, you gave me your Pop Poppins T-shirt and a really good mix tape and took really good care of my pet rat Beep for a year.

There's been other stuff, too, that we've been through together, times that everything went horribly pear-shaped; the kind of life stuff too huge and scary to talk about on the internet. I remember all that too.

What I don't always remember is to call you back. That's terrible. I am a crap friend sometimes, mostly when I forget to call people back, or respond to emails, too. Damn it. I'll say it again, just so you'll believe me:

Lucy Ransdell is a Crap Friend. Sometimes.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm a crap friend and I forget to call and email and stuff. I won't do that anymore. I promise. It doesn't mean that I don't love you, and that I'm not super super proud of you for being a fancy-schmancy doctor now. Because I do; I am.

Reason #1,786,982 why Tara is the bomb: She knows how to forgive her friends.

I love you Tara!

Lucy loves you |