I met Crystal a little more than six years ago, right around the time I pleaded with her to call a guy I had been seeing, pretend to be me and break up with him for me. She did it. She did it well, even. She talked to him for just about 40 minutes, and he never suspected a thing. Now, I'm not proud of this, but it is remarkable, is it not? That he couldn't tell the sound of HIS GIRLFRIEND'S VOICE? Although, arguably, we had never kissed. And he was Republican. Oh, and his favorite store was the Bass Pro Shop. And if Lauren is reading this, I know she'd want me to mention that he wrote a horrible song about me called "Crazy Little Angel." Basically, the two of us weren't on the same page. But, I was terrified of telling this man—who had been nothing but nice to me over the last couple weeks/months—that he wasn't for me. I was young and insecure and silly and I wanted someone to just do it for me (like most things back then including my laundry, my homework and the payment of all my bills) but everyone I asked looked at me with disgust and judgment and said, "No. Just no." But not Crystal. She said, "Sure. Why the hell not?" And after it was all over, I gave her a thank you card that mentioned it was the weirdest thing I'd ever thanked someone for.
It shouldn't shock you that, ultimately, a friendship was born.
Crystal gets a lot of credit for introducing me to my husband, which she did. And she gets a lot of credit for being our mutual friend, which she is. But before I met Mike, before she met Mike, we met each other. And even though Mike and I are lucky, to have one person we both care so deeply for, Crystal is still my friend, the girl who volunteered to do my dirty work for me, without a second thought. No judgment. No advice.
A few years ago Crystal and I were at Chili's, enjoying a Presidente margarita. And after we enjoyed that first one, we enjoyed two more. And we couldn't drive. We had to call our guys to come and retrieve us, and we knew they wouldn't be pleased. They hadn't planned on schlepping their drunk girls around. Crystal and I devised a plan, a brilliant plan to lie when they got there. To say we'd only drank two shakers of margaritas but they must have been especially strong, because we were tipsier than we usually would be. We were sorry, we'd plan to say, but it wasn't really our fault, see, because the margaritas were just stronger this night. It was this one specific batch of margarita mix, that was it. It was to work out wonderfully. No one would be mad and maybe—since they'd be there to drive us and all—they would just say, to hell with it, order another! So we practiced, the lying:
Crystal: So, how many margaritas did you have?
Jennie: Two! Just two!
When the guys showed up, I got nervous. One of them looked directly at me and asked, "How many margaritas did you have?" To which I immediately (seriously, no pause) answered with, "three." The slow-motion look of shock that took over Crystal's face still makes me giggle when I think of it. Later—after we left and all was not roses and sunshine—she pulled me aside and said, "What the hell happened?" And I was honest, "It just came out. I couldn't think of a lie fast enough." "YOU COULDN'T THINK OF A DIFFERENT NUMBER?" We still laugh about that night, but even then, she didn't judge. She laughed with me, as she laughed with me the first night we awkwardly bonded over a man who was very sweet and very clueless.
When you meet people when you're 20, you imagine a lot will change over the course of your friendship. You even imagine the friendship will change, fade. You grow a lot during the ages of 20 and 25 and you lose just as much as you gain. There aren't many certainties, sure things, truths you can really count on.
Crystal is a certainty.
Today my friend, who is a quarter Japanese, is turning 27. And as Mike said to her years ago—when he called to wish her a happy birthday—happy thanks for bombing the hell out of our country day, since our dear friend was born on Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
We're both just glad she was born at all.
Because we met each other through her, yes. But, more than that, because we met her period.
Happy birthday, Crystal.
We were dancing to "Hips Don't Lie" when this picture was taken.