RJHCXJABW SWBWRRP
MJV & DMVIt doesn't really make a lot of sense to clump these people as I have them, when all they necessarily have in common is chronology, but as I am the human calendar, this is how it makes sense to me. So there.
I don't remember first meeting RJH, but it likely happened at the final party for the visiting professor in the fall of 1989 through my then-boyfriend SSP. I remember our second meeting, during which I presumed rather too much on privileged information and asked a favor I had no right to. But he liked me anyway. It was his first semester at UConn, poor chap, and I might have frightened him. He got over it. He is one of the triumvirate who kept me alive the year I was insane (well, the year it was impossible to hide it). He translated pertinent quotes from "A Room with a View" into Latin and made me undo them into English. Upon reading some obscure poem or other, he saw a lisa-connection, gave me a passage from it, and set me on a scavenger hunt: what the passage was from and why I would like it (its subject matter included bees and thistles). He was the first person I told when I decided to withdraw from Medieval Studies. I scarpered joyfully to his office right after I Decided, and it was between classes so the halls were pulsing and hectic and he was on his way to teach a class, and I announced, bursting into ecstatic tears, "Bob, I've decided to withdraw from the program," and all I remember next is his immediate, strong, reassuring handshake. One of the few people who loves all of me just the way I am, even the prickly stripey parts. He even bought me a Tintin shirt though he is an Asterix man himself. (top)
I wrote one of my most hilarious letters to CLH about first meeting CXJ, who doesn't have a middle name but whose first name (some call it a Christian name) is easily abbreviated to X. Don't you get it yet? Sheesh. Despite how proud I am of how funny the letter is, it is perhaps still not suitable for public consumption. I can say that at our friends' house where he lived and where we had tea the second time we met, I was impressed by how much their pets loved him, though I feared he was more a cat person since Kato clearly was positively in love with him (I guess I didn't know Kato well enough then; he is as close to a dog as you can felinely get). CXJ and I played a lot together--once upon a wander at UConn we met someone who made his own boomerangs. This man was so impressed that we wanted to learn to throw that he gave us each one (two because we're differently handed). Also we went on a strange roadtrip to Boston during which we did not find any milkshakes, roamed the dogs at Mansfield Hollow, and brought an injured fawn to a shelter (it died). While we were hallmates, he didn't strangle me when I played "Under the Bridge" on infinite repeat. Plus there was one particularly amusing drunken (for him) evening.... All of these things enable me to forgive him the atrocious moustache he grew, ruining for me one of the chief aesthetic pleasures of my life (his face). He is married now to JK, a photographer with a sultry voice. (top)
Commonly known as Aimst and other nicknames derived from the SNL skit about the Richmeister, terror of the copy room, which was new the year I met her. Tragically, though RDC was both Rich and the Director of Copy Services (or something) at HBL, he had never seen the skit. But there's enough about him elsewhere. ABW and I met at about the fourth week of my certifiable school year. A member of the triumvirate that supported me that bad year, she liked me even though she'd never known me sane. ABW saved my neck in Old English and she's been saving it since. She and one Susan Smith (not that Susan Smith) were my OE tutors. Their idea of studying was the library, repetition, and index cards. My idea was taking a pint of Ben & Jerry's to Mansfield Hollow (that was only once). She teases me brutally but mainly about the same things in herself. She makes me howl with laughter but I can also talk ideas with her, a marvelous combination. ABW brought me to an sf con so I could see Ursula LeGuin, wants to catalog my Underwear Adventures, was the only other person to dance the Time Warp with me at a party at RJH's, and encouraged me for an entire summer to smooch RDC. She is now gaga about her son NKW, who arrived 22 May 1996 (DMB's birthday) whom she shares with her husband KRW. She also picked me up from the airport when I came home summer of 1996 and stole my shoes so she would have another opportunity to see me while I was home, and endured an evening of French conversation (she wears a black armband every 14 October) to do so. (top)
SWBW was part of RDC's college crowd. She calls us all "kids" and is the only other person I know well who has a cockatiel. Its name is Galen, after an ancient Greek doctor (SWBW is in pre-med). The last time I called her, her husband accidentally hung up on me, and I patiently waited for her to call me back because I was feeling miserly. So when she called she was all laughing and apologetic and I was all laughing and self-deprecating. Without a word exchanged we just chortled for about ten minutes. What else could you want in a friend? She even liked the extremely crude letter RRP and I made for her out of a Playgirl and a Weekly World News. Obviously a woman of superior taste. (top)
RRP went to school with RDC (which sounds odd, because
we were all at the same school at the same time). She didn't like me when we
first met. There was croquet game going on, and I wanted to participate but
I hate games with balls, so I was just kinda picking my ball up and moving it
along at the pace of those who could aim and strike with a mallet purposefully--completely
openly and without subterfuge. This amused me--hey, I was participating--but
not her (and reportedly not other people either, oh well). How funny
that of the people who understand me best, I made a really poor first impression
on three; but all three got over it, which says a lot for them. Actually our
real first meeting was through SLH, when I made
an equally good impression. They both worked at Whitney caf and as I passed
through the line, SLH said "Hey Lisa this is my friend." Poor RRP,
her first name is a song, and I, ever so originally and tactfully witty, immediately
sang its chorus. Oh, the poor taste, it makes me cringe. This happened to her
so often she doesn't remember the incident (which is fortunate) or SLH (which
is unfortunate). Anyway, I got to know RRP after she moved into our sorry apartment
complex. She was our third roommate, eating lots of pasta and watching lots
of "Seinfeld" with us, reading Willa Cather, Terry McMillan, and Cynthia
Heimel with me. She could tell you a story
or two about short- or long-pronged forks, though that certainly didn't happen
at our house. RRP and I have rolled on the floor laughing at things we
could never confess, much less explain; cruised the highways singing along to
whatever that song is ("I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me")
[Aha! It's by Beck]; built a snowpig with RDC; spent hours being mallrats; journeyed
to Provincetown; and survived for weeks on Caesar salad. She directed my wedding
and she is always the person to call when I have to scream and be extremely
rude to express myself, when whatever story I have to relate has rendered me
otherwise speechless. She is my pal, even if she doesn't have a middle name.
RRP married MPR 13 November 1999.
(top)
I met MJV and DMV the night they suspected NAV was on the way. I didn't know what to expect from this pair, but I was pleasantly surprised. They are two of the funniest people I know, the most open, the best couples, and surely the best of all possible parents to NAV (who didn't arrive at RDC's and my wedding as I'd hoped but three weeks after) and now NJV, born March 1997. And now MLV, born on ZBD's birthday in 1999! (top) And later another boy whose middle name and birthday, in September 2000, I don't know.
RDC's Crowd
I've adopted Sooby and RRP on my own, but there're also JGW, who was randomly paired up with RDC their first semester at UConn, and Skip, who lived down the hall, and EJB, whom he met in seventh grade and has been friends with since. They were each other's best man, and as RDC said in his toast at EJB's wedding, first they were rivals to see who could be the most rebellious kid in school and then they realized they could get in a lot more trouble together. JGW is married to Robin who gave me Dickon, KPM to JHRDM who artfully did my makeup at my wedding and made us the Sneetches that perched on our wedding cake, and EJB to TEMB.
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