Wednesday, March 01, 2006


Waria

First of all, aren't all my friends attractive? I know. Thus explaining my crippling image issues. Anyway, Maria has pretty consistently been what one could call my best friend, for about...(doing the math, uh, number crunching, um..) 16 years. NO FRIGGIN' WAY!! That is amazing. You are not amazed, but I am amazed. Isn't counting up your life like that so intense? Time and space are this really uncomfortable dimension for me. But always with the digressing (in the Mira post I meant some form of divergence but wrote "delineating". Sorry, I fixed that now. You can go back to thinking I don't have poop in my head). So yes, Maria and I are the best of friends and that means we can stand in front of the extraordinarily all-encompassing mirror in the bathroom of her childhood home and pick our adult acne together for ungodly amounts of hours or complain about the current state of our hair, grades, Temporo-Mandibular Joint Disorder, or wardrobe for even longer. Now for the list: Maria is god danged original. Some people go away and you don't really notice. Maria is my reference point for the emotion of missing a person. A moment, a conversation, will be very different if Maria is present than if she is not. I would say this is true of all my dearest friends. But I have noticed Maria's absence more than I have noticed the absence of others. Often wondering to myself or aloud what Maria would have to say about a given topic. She is really great at giving supportive, sincere feedback. And even though she is entirely capable of a full range of emotions, she is profoundly rational. So much so that she can even have a clear, objective opinion about her own daughter. I have never seen another person be able to do that. Maria is outrageously intelligent, I guess that's mandatory criteria because I'm getting a pattern here in my posts about friends. And she makes me laugh a lot.( I started this post yesterday and have been feeling banal and even more mediocre than usual. So in order to actually get this posted) I'll just let a recent email from Maria take it from here...(I had to modify it some for it to make sense.)

My EMT class (from the start) has been shockingly bad. Picture an emergency medical techniques class taught by a whole team of nearly illiterate people spending all of class contradicting the text and misreading the Powerpoint outline from the chapter we have just read for homework. On the first night of class, (I think I told you) the instructor repeatedly said "This crap is so boring". Well, last night was the low point thus far. The instructor read from the screen "Cardiac Treats" instead of "Cardiac Threats", and didn't even catch herself! She just continued like "Cardiac Treats" made all kinds of sense, and a student had to correct her! Anyway, that is but one example of the caliber of incompetence we are dealing with. My friend Andy was so angry afterwards, that the whole hour-long van ride home he was too pissed to speak. The rest of us just spent the trip home shrieking like banshees. Erin poignantly questioned, "Now, is it 'Rice Crispy Treats' or is it 'Rice Crispy Threats'?" and Meg replied, "If you are vegan, it is definitely 'Rice Crispy Threats'". A discussion ensued about what a treat it was to have an obstructed airway. In class the instructor had challenged, "Now, what does obstructed mean?". Brilliant, what a treat it is to have blood clots. The ride home afterwards almost makes taking the class worthwhile.
Love,
Maria

3 comments:

Jennifer McKenzie said...

LOL Carrie! That's what I have! I have Cardiac Treats. And it is a treat. That's why I take this cool candy called "Blood Pressure Medication." Wow! What a "treat".
Too bad your EMT class is such a pain. At least you recognize ignorance when you see it. Lots of people don't.
Talk to you soon.

Jennifer McKenzie said...

LOL Carrie! That's what I have! I have Cardiac Treats. And it is a treat. That's why I take this cool candy called "Blood Pressure Medication." Wow! What a "treat".
Too bad your EMT class is such a pain. At least you recognize ignorance when you see it. Lots of people don't.
Talk to you soon.

Carrie said...

Wasn't that funny? I don't know if it came across, but for the record that was Maria's email to me. Good to see you Miss Jen!