Monday, September 30, 2013

Best friends, tube tops and the hidden romance of Viking helmets


 She's going to be pissed at me for posting a photo that reveals her to be sub-5'4".*
*(I'm not a giant, though; I just hadn't given up on my shoes yet.)

Yesterday was the first anniversary of the wedding of my very best friend on earth - I hope you guys all have a friend like this. If she's a friend from college, she's the one where the entire first year you knew each other is a blur of irresponsibly late-night (and in our case, inexcusably sober, because we were both too square to drink) conversations about everything and nothing. The one with whom you have so many inside jokes that you have to remind each other where half of them originated from. Even if you haven't lived in the same place in years, she's your first phone call when you're twisting in circles over a crisis that nobody else will understand. She's the only person on earth who calls you by that appalling nickname (the only person permitted to do it, for that matter). And even if you have a partner by now, and even if that partner of yours is as steady and strong as we all dream they will be, this friend's presence in your life will always be the very definition of the phrase "having your back."

I do have a shirt on in this photo. It was a tube top.
It was not one of my better decisions.
You may have heard what they say about flat-chested girls, strapless items, and gravity.

So, a year ago yesterday she married the love of her life. All the usual things were true when they got together - after 12 or 13 years of growling at stories about asshats, I could hear the difference in the way she talked about him, and I could see the difference in the way he treated her. Unlike the asshats, he actually deserves her. He is steady and strong, and kind, but also ridiculous in a completely essential way. KT and I do not last long around people who behave like normal adults.

This is from my wedding, which was two weeks after theirs.
He is wearing a dinner napkin and a Viking hat that he stole from the photobooth. She is gazing at him adoringly.
That should really tell you everything you need to know.


Looking back, I especially love this photo of the two of us, from 2005:


We were in LA for another friend's bachelorette party, and we spent the afternoon driving at random through the Hollywood Hills. We stopped at this lookout point to admire the view, and decided to take pictures of ourselves against the backdrop. I don't even remember what cracked us up, but I love that we were laughing so hard that we totally could not pull it together for this photo. We were 26/27 and didn't have the faintest idea what would happen with the guys we were dating at the time (I married mine, a long-ass time later; she kept looking for a few more years before she met Viking Helmet), but it really didn't seem to matter all that much. Whatever did or didn't happen with the guys, we'd always have each other.

Still, I'm so deeply heart-glad that she found him. That helmet wouldn't look the same on anybody else.

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