I have felt reminiscent over the last couple days. Mostly, I have been thinking about how much I miss doing things with one of my best friends and favorite family members, Anita. We have so many similarities with an equal number of polar opposite qualities we were just meant to be friends.
Our birthdays are both on the 27th of the month, hers being the 27th of December mine following on the 27th of January. So even though our births were exactly a month from each other they are also a year apart. She lived in Washington and I lived in New York, you can live further apart while staying in the continental US but it was still a long ways off as a kid. Anita has always been a gifted athlete and I was a plump child. She is blonde with blue eyes while my brown hair matches my brown eyes pretty well. Whenever we would get together as kids we would tend to be a bit standoffish for a bit and then we would be best of friends for the rest of the visit. When we both decided to go to BYU, I was super excited to live just up the hill from where she was living.
My friendship with Anita kept me sane that year in college, I actually don't know if she knows how much it meant to me. Whenever I would be too stressed with the classes I was drowning in, whenever I needed to get away from the 75 other girls living on my dorm floor, or just when I needed a friendly face Anita was there. So when she asked for a small favor, of course I was on board. Her friend had an admirer, and she was traveling from Washington to Utah to see him. In a moment of panic he told her he was engaged so she wouldn't come. After getting him to describe this fiance she decided to still come and make sure this girl was good enough for him.
As it so happened I matched the majority of the description he gave, although I'm not quite as short as he described, my hair was not quite as long, nor is my hair curly. It was actually a pretty easy way to get engaged I curled my hair, picked out a Walmart ring and voila it was on my finger. The crazy girl arrived and the acting began. A few problems ensued I am not very good at acting, the girl really wasn't crazy just a bit strange, and I had never actually had a boyfriend and didn't really know the proper way to act with one (to be honest, I still stink at that job).
If I had been at any school other than BYU I don't know how believable our little charade would have been. Seeing how neither of us had been at BYU long enough to have known each other more than a couple months and now we were saying we were engaged. So we developed fantastical lies about a whirlwind courtship over the course of a couple weeks that led to an engagement. Our stories got crossed, I shied away from him touching me too much, wouldn't let him get anywhere near kissing me, and I refused to stop studying long enough to be with them every moment of my waking day. Things did not add up to an 18 year old being excited to be a baby bride. Despite all that the poor girl swallowed the whole pack of lies, that spoonful of sugar makes anything go down...
To make the ensuing notice of a broken engagement seem plausible, we invented a reason to fight while we were on our way to the airport for this girl to go home. I don't remember what it was, but it made it look like I was the one to call it off. This worked out well for both of us, because I was certainly not planning to get jilted by a fake fiance and he could then claim he was still too broken hearted over the failed engagement to even think about dating for a while.
When I think back on this situation I still laugh about how utterly ridiculous it was and I also can't believe he wouldn't just let her know he wasn't interested in her beyond being friends. Then on top of everything, I just have to laugh at how much fun Anita and I had planning and laughing about the situation. Good friends are something you cannot waste, especially when they are family - that can be a rare find.
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