Best of Friends

My grade point average went down the semester I became friends with Teresa. I was a sophomore in college and the decline was no small sacrifice for me. I really really really cared about my grades. Once, during my freshman year in high school, I had a 103 percent in my Spanish class. My dad picked me up from cross country practice one day and I told him I'd gotten a 100 percent on a test.

"Uh oh," he said, laughing, "your average went down."

I didn't laugh.

I was a nerd and still am a nerd and probably always will be a nerd. But when I became friends with Teresa, I had to put my nerdiness aside. No, really--she demanded it. She liked to stay up late and watch crappy TV and have sleep-overs on school nights and--crucially--she didn't want me doing things like homework while we did all of that. I had never understood the notion of "cramming" for school before. But suddenly I did. I had to cram all my reading and papers and assignments into the slivers of time that Teresa was busy doing something without me.

And I made those slivers of time as small as possible because, like everyone else who ever met Teresa, I thought she was wonderful.

And she still is. She also still lives in New York, which is far away from San Francisco. But this week, she and her husband--who is also wonderful--and their two children--who are, of course, wonderful squared--are in town. While they're here, Tiffany and I are soaking up every second with them because that's what you do when you're best friends.

Now, I am only one of Teresa's many many best friends (Tiffany is another--we all went to school and played soccer together). On the other hand, she is one of very few best friends of mine. Unlike Teresa, I am stingy with my friendship (not only stingy but brutally honest: in elementary school, I once told a girl who told me I was her best friend that she could be my second-best girl friend because I already had a best friend--Zac--and a best girl friend, Beth Ann... okay, so now you know I'm nerdy and mean)

Anyway, Teresa was the first friend to really teach me that certain stuff--like getting to class on time and getting enough sleep before a test and tenths of percentage points in a grade point average--doesn't matter. And that other stuff--like telling stories to a friend until she falls asleep and and knowing what to do when someone cries and how to make them laugh again--does.

And tonight, Tiffany and I got to teach her three-year-old daughter how to make a fort out of pillows and a blanket.

So that's pretty damn cool.