my friend nicole
I would not have stayed on course if it were not for Nicole, without her; there would be no Spritopias to entertain you. Only the most talented anthropologists are studied enough to know the history of how I came to be Spritopias but it was mainly her doing.
Hanson Children, why are you on my iPod? Who is responsible for this heresy! Does anyone know how this thing works! Make this go away.
We both went to the same University, in a small and tragically boring Nebraska town to which this urbanite did not acclimate well. How I came to be in the Midwest or at this college is still a mystery to everyone including myself. I was accepted to the best colleges on the East Coast with better scholarships but I ended up being trained as a teacher. Nicole was in the same program, and we had many classes together and by �many� I mean �ones I bothered to attend.�
My class notes are really an ongoing correspondence between Nicole and myself as we fought sleep during lectures and student presentations. I also remember being in teacher practicum when she was in student teaching under the same cooperating teacher. I was so amazed at her brilliance and charm in our social lives but her teaching always blew me away, she is a virtuoso in the classroom and in comparison, as great as my powers are I will never equal hers.
Nicole, who is a year or two older than I am, nurtured the qualities found in me that make me who I am today.
The first and most important contribution to my catalog of quirks is she trained me to constantly keep meticulous track of everything going on and I believe it is on her orders that I always have a pad, pen, and camera on my person. While her then fianc� was away with the National Guard it was my job to keep things in �the minutes� which was a detailed report of everything that went on during meals, field trips, and other events of the day. We are very clever and if we had the means, we would have videotaped the events. To this day, I still keep minutes of my day to report them to you here, as I did then and still do my very best to misconstrue what people have said and done to make them interesting or at least embarrassed.
The second aspect of my personality that she ingrained into me is the love of the late night dive. If your establishment was open twenty-four hours, we tried to be there at some point of the day. I do not recall that we ever ate anything but we certainly drank you free refills until I was wired tight enough to go for days. She also taught me how to leave a Denny�s without paying and have the chutzpah to go back there the very next day and stiff the same waitress. She could also get any waitress to bring us the jar of cherries that they put in the sodas; no one else could do that. If they gave up the cherries we would actually pay and tip.
Every movie harkens back to Star Wars was an important lesson. This was normally just something small that we did not get too involved with (because we do talk, loudly in movies while chomping popcorn) until Air Force One, because an escape pod + Harrison Ford = Star Wars. She is the one who got me Luke Skywalker�s face over my own on my College ID. If I am going to identify with a Science Fiction character, at least I can choose one that is not mediocre or from a film trilogy, that is just special effects and faux intellectualism. We rocked the dollar theatre.
She also allowed me to turn chaotic college life into order. Our friends all met at the same time and place for dinner and had to sit in the same seats every time. I am all about order and continuity. This was very helpful to keeping a lid on my unpredictable behavior.
She also taught me to freak hunt. After enjoying a dollar movie and free late night breakfast at Denny�s we would got to twenty-four hour K-Mart, have people paged, and gawk at the other people who were there that late. I still do this today.
I will always remember this incident in our Shakespeare class. There was this obese girl who had a special desk that she could in and out of with dignity and three skinny girls in our class would always try to get there before her, take the desk and laugh at her while she tried to negotiate the tiny desks that were available to the rest of us. One day when this happened (and it always happened before the professor arrived, he was a kind old man who would not have allowed this) Nicole tore those girls a new one and taught me the value of having �asshole ripping scissors� in your pocket. After that, it also became my job to sit in that seat before the girl who needed the desk showed up and relinquish the desk to her.
I was always involved in the cause, fighting injustice and promoting the American way but that day Nicole taught us or reminded us that sometimes the social cause is right in front of us and the little person we are fighting for is not in East Timor or the Balkans but in our lecture class or on our dorm.
Later on in life there was a time when I needed help and the help unlooked for came from that girl in our literature class who never forgot what Nicole had done for her.
I guess I am just rambling and making us sound incredibly boring and strange but this is what I learned, in a list:
1. Write it all down and take pictures (shamelessly) when possible
2. Do everything with an air of authority so people do not question you. If you look like what you are doing is okay, people will not stop you from doing it.
3. If the waitress does not come back for an hour your meal is free
4. If you want it, ask for it
5. Everyone is ripping George Lucas off
6. Fight for the little people and they will fight for you
7. Never eat yellow snow
8. The five second rule is a myth
9. Friends you learn from are the very best kind
I know she will get better because life would not be the same without her.
