When I was 12 and at nerd camp ("this one time...at nerd camp...") I met this crazy girl named Beth. It's all a blur now. Her favorite color was purple. She lived fifteen minutes from my house, in another town. She had a dalmation named Sherlock that her family eventually had to give away. She had a big, cool scar that you could see when we were in bathing suits to use the pool. (It was from open-heart surgery, and she couldn't always walk as fast as I could, but she seemed fine.) One of our projects that summer was to build a scale house for worms -- the lamp would be a toothpaste cap mounted on a marble. She liked fish, and gave herself the extra middle name of "Fishtank." We wrote a script about the camp snack-plums going evil and attacking everyone, named it "Attack of the Killer Plumatoes," and then performed it.
Really, not a lot of people could have gotten me up in front of a group back then. Or even now. But Beth didn't give a crap, up there in some jerry-rigged costume I don't remember (I think a cape was involved?) singing, "Attaaaaaaack...of the killler Plumatooooooes...." to beat the band.
That was Beth's last year of camp, but we kept in touch. Ooh, imagine scared me at a party with high school girls a whole two years older than I was. We listened to the Beatles and, in a rare display of girliness, did our nails, though we'd do things like every nail a different color, just to keep our mothers on their toes. We went to movies, got ice cream, all the normal stuff. I had my friends and she had hers, and the twain rarely met, but somehow it all worked out. I'd call her with stories of the latest screwed up thing to happen at my high school, and she's say "Wow!" and compare it to Orwell. We had matching pins that read, "Why be normal?" She introduced me to Douglas Adams (not literally. The books.)
She went off to MIT when I was a junior in high school. I'd occasionally get a postcard with a picture of MIT or of Boston, and some tale of college life ("We were playing croquet in the park across the street, and then the cops came!") By then, we listened to less Beatles and more Nine Inch Nails. There was still no particular reason to be normal, and better yet, it sounded like at college, that was okay.
Somehow, I thought I'd see her more when I went to college in Connecticut. Yes and no. She came to visit me a couple of times, once for each summer I spent at Wesleyan. One of those times, we went to Mass. I'd never been to church before, but she took it well when I declared the only difference between Judaism and Catholicism to be "stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down" versus "stand up, sit down, kneel." I took her to all my local dives: greasy spoon O'Rourkes, Klekolo World Coffee, the Athenian Diner -- at that last one, Beth, Rick and I gathered our classic diner story of:
Beth: Excuse me, there's a hair in my water glass.
Waitress: [picks up glass, looks, puts it back down] No there isn't. [Walks away.]
Later, when she griped about one of my classmates hitting on her, I apologized and said at least Rick hadn't hit on her. "No," she said, "He was too busy hitting on you." She was right. Who knew?
One time senior year, I came back from spring break and there was a box sitting on the porch of my house. Beth had sent me the book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" by Richard Feynman with a note explaining that he was a famous physicist and one of her personal heroes, and that when I read the book, I'd understand. I did.
Beth and I had less and less in common superficially, but I could always call her with the most screwed-up possible Wesleyan drama and she'd at least pretend I wasn't off my tree. (Except the one time she uttered the classic lines, "I can relate. Actually, I can't relate at all. That's really weird, Jen.")
She repaid the college dive favor years later when Rick and I went to visit her in Somerville, back when Somerville was still cheap and divey. Rick fell asleep in her living room and we went to Dolly's. She came to visit Boston a few years later, when she was in grad school in Florida, and gave me hell for not being able to stay up all night to go to diners anymore.
"But I'm not a student anymore," I groaned.
"So what!"
But at least I was able to show her some new Boston spots, like Boston Beer Works, serving a Watermelon Ale with a real slice of watermelon in it that she talked about for years as the only beer she liked. She wasn't much for drinking because of her heart condition, and never so much a tried a joint in college because she wanted to keep her science clearance clean, but I did manage to get her drunk once...we flipped through a book of misheard song lyrics, cracking up and warbling, "She's got a chicken to ride! And she don't care!"
I got a lot of phone calls about her thesis in those days. And also about her a-hole ex-boyfriend, followed by another, different, less a-hole-ish but still unsatisfactory boyfriend. I assured her that all she needed to do was get out of Florida. I'd been to visit her in Gainesville by then (what a dump), and understood completely. She teased me for years about how excited I was to eat at a place called "Steak & Shake," and apologized for almost as long for being a bad host, but I had fun in Gainesville nonetheless. I think it was Florida that taught Beth that she wasn't really a Republican -- I'd never known her to vote anything but Independent and Green once she saw what the modern Republican party really stood for. Besides, how many Republicans really join campus groups like Free Tibet and Amnesty International?
After becoming Dr. Beth, she went off to California to do what she'd wanted to do when I met her back at camp: work for NASA. I was in Germany around that time. Our paths crossed on our first visit to America, because she happened to be in New Jersey. Then our paths crossed again on our second visit to America, when we were visiting Rick's parents at his cousin's house near LA. Beth drove out from Pasadena to Corona even though she was still nervous about driving on freeways. Rick's mother was not long for this world at that point, but Beth took it in stride. In some way, I was glad one of my close friends got to see how much Rick's mom -- and by extension, Rick and everyone else -- was suffering at that point. It was, and is, somewhat indescribable. She stayed for dinner and then braved the dark freeway home.
Then I was in LA. You know, astronomers travel a lot -- the good ones, anyway. She was always at a meeting or a conference and I work a lot of weekends, and she also had a new, terrific boyfriend who appeared to be The One. (I told her all she needed to do was get out of Florida...) So I got settled and she got settled and we didn't hang out much for a while. I did go to her place a few times. Once, she'd just returned from some science thing in Berlin and had a souvenier calendar; she asked how to pronounce things like "Gedachtniskirche" and actually seemed interested in the answer, trying out all the consonants a few times herself. I went to her 30th birthday party last summer and consulted with her on how to best put purple streaks in her hair. She had a Halloween party that I showed up to without a costume, because I'm a fuddy duddy like that. She was dressed like a cat and went around actively meowing and purring.
I also went to her housewarming party a few weeks ago and re-met another old friend from camp I hadn't seen since 1988 or so. Beth not only remembered my birthday -- which I almost discourage friends from doing, because I never do much for it -- and asked if she should save a date for me since her calendar was filling up. I said no, since I wasn't going to do anything special. She called me that night and some of our friends from UCLA happened to be over, because our friend Craig who was running the LA marathon that weekend asked if he could have his carbo-loading night at our place that night instead of his studio apartment. I hope Beth believed me that I wasn't having a birthday party without her. I really wasn't.
Anyway, we had plans to hang out this weekend. We were going to go have lunch in Pasadena, near where she used to live, and then see an exhibit at the Pacific Asia museum that I'd invited her to -- she dug Asia, and had taken some Japanese in high school.
You know by now this isn't going anywhere good, right?
Beth sent me email to solidify our plans at 1:19pm. At 8:30pm, her boyfriend called to tell me she was dead.
Hug your partner. Count your blessings. And tell your old friends that whether you hang out every other day or once a decade, they're still family.
Heck, tell your new friends, too.
Really, not a lot of people could have gotten me up in front of a group back then. Or even now. But Beth didn't give a crap, up there in some jerry-rigged costume I don't remember (I think a cape was involved?) singing, "Attaaaaaaack...of the killler Plumatooooooes...." to beat the band.
That was Beth's last year of camp, but we kept in touch. Ooh, imagine scared me at a party with high school girls a whole two years older than I was. We listened to the Beatles and, in a rare display of girliness, did our nails, though we'd do things like every nail a different color, just to keep our mothers on their toes. We went to movies, got ice cream, all the normal stuff. I had my friends and she had hers, and the twain rarely met, but somehow it all worked out. I'd call her with stories of the latest screwed up thing to happen at my high school, and she's say "Wow!" and compare it to Orwell. We had matching pins that read, "Why be normal?" She introduced me to Douglas Adams (not literally. The books.)
She went off to MIT when I was a junior in high school. I'd occasionally get a postcard with a picture of MIT or of Boston, and some tale of college life ("We were playing croquet in the park across the street, and then the cops came!") By then, we listened to less Beatles and more Nine Inch Nails. There was still no particular reason to be normal, and better yet, it sounded like at college, that was okay.
Somehow, I thought I'd see her more when I went to college in Connecticut. Yes and no. She came to visit me a couple of times, once for each summer I spent at Wesleyan. One of those times, we went to Mass. I'd never been to church before, but she took it well when I declared the only difference between Judaism and Catholicism to be "stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down" versus "stand up, sit down, kneel." I took her to all my local dives: greasy spoon O'Rourkes, Klekolo World Coffee, the Athenian Diner -- at that last one, Beth, Rick and I gathered our classic diner story of:
Beth: Excuse me, there's a hair in my water glass.
Waitress: [picks up glass, looks, puts it back down] No there isn't. [Walks away.]
Later, when she griped about one of my classmates hitting on her, I apologized and said at least Rick hadn't hit on her. "No," she said, "He was too busy hitting on you." She was right. Who knew?
One time senior year, I came back from spring break and there was a box sitting on the porch of my house. Beth had sent me the book "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" by Richard Feynman with a note explaining that he was a famous physicist and one of her personal heroes, and that when I read the book, I'd understand. I did.
Beth and I had less and less in common superficially, but I could always call her with the most screwed-up possible Wesleyan drama and she'd at least pretend I wasn't off my tree. (Except the one time she uttered the classic lines, "I can relate. Actually, I can't relate at all. That's really weird, Jen.")
She repaid the college dive favor years later when Rick and I went to visit her in Somerville, back when Somerville was still cheap and divey. Rick fell asleep in her living room and we went to Dolly's. She came to visit Boston a few years later, when she was in grad school in Florida, and gave me hell for not being able to stay up all night to go to diners anymore.
"But I'm not a student anymore," I groaned.
"So what!"
But at least I was able to show her some new Boston spots, like Boston Beer Works, serving a Watermelon Ale with a real slice of watermelon in it that she talked about for years as the only beer she liked. She wasn't much for drinking because of her heart condition, and never so much a tried a joint in college because she wanted to keep her science clearance clean, but I did manage to get her drunk once...we flipped through a book of misheard song lyrics, cracking up and warbling, "She's got a chicken to ride! And she don't care!"
I got a lot of phone calls about her thesis in those days. And also about her a-hole ex-boyfriend, followed by another, different, less a-hole-ish but still unsatisfactory boyfriend. I assured her that all she needed to do was get out of Florida. I'd been to visit her in Gainesville by then (what a dump), and understood completely. She teased me for years about how excited I was to eat at a place called "Steak & Shake," and apologized for almost as long for being a bad host, but I had fun in Gainesville nonetheless. I think it was Florida that taught Beth that she wasn't really a Republican -- I'd never known her to vote anything but Independent and Green once she saw what the modern Republican party really stood for. Besides, how many Republicans really join campus groups like Free Tibet and Amnesty International?
After becoming Dr. Beth, she went off to California to do what she'd wanted to do when I met her back at camp: work for NASA. I was in Germany around that time. Our paths crossed on our first visit to America, because she happened to be in New Jersey. Then our paths crossed again on our second visit to America, when we were visiting Rick's parents at his cousin's house near LA. Beth drove out from Pasadena to Corona even though she was still nervous about driving on freeways. Rick's mother was not long for this world at that point, but Beth took it in stride. In some way, I was glad one of my close friends got to see how much Rick's mom -- and by extension, Rick and everyone else -- was suffering at that point. It was, and is, somewhat indescribable. She stayed for dinner and then braved the dark freeway home.
Then I was in LA. You know, astronomers travel a lot -- the good ones, anyway. She was always at a meeting or a conference and I work a lot of weekends, and she also had a new, terrific boyfriend who appeared to be The One. (I told her all she needed to do was get out of Florida...) So I got settled and she got settled and we didn't hang out much for a while. I did go to her place a few times. Once, she'd just returned from some science thing in Berlin and had a souvenier calendar; she asked how to pronounce things like "Gedachtniskirche" and actually seemed interested in the answer, trying out all the consonants a few times herself. I went to her 30th birthday party last summer and consulted with her on how to best put purple streaks in her hair. She had a Halloween party that I showed up to without a costume, because I'm a fuddy duddy like that. She was dressed like a cat and went around actively meowing and purring.
I also went to her housewarming party a few weeks ago and re-met another old friend from camp I hadn't seen since 1988 or so. Beth not only remembered my birthday -- which I almost discourage friends from doing, because I never do much for it -- and asked if she should save a date for me since her calendar was filling up. I said no, since I wasn't going to do anything special. She called me that night and some of our friends from UCLA happened to be over, because our friend Craig who was running the LA marathon that weekend asked if he could have his carbo-loading night at our place that night instead of his studio apartment. I hope Beth believed me that I wasn't having a birthday party without her. I really wasn't.
Anyway, we had plans to hang out this weekend. We were going to go have lunch in Pasadena, near where she used to live, and then see an exhibit at the Pacific Asia museum that I'd invited her to -- she dug Asia, and had taken some Japanese in high school.
You know by now this isn't going anywhere good, right?
Beth sent me email to solidify our plans at 1:19pm. At 8:30pm, her boyfriend called to tell me she was dead.
Hug your partner. Count your blessings. And tell your old friends that whether you hang out every other day or once a decade, they're still family.
Heck, tell your new friends, too.
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