in the event that your first impression really is everything i may have to retire from meeting people as i'm getting exceedingly more bad at it part 4

me, i'm great at first impressions. most people will never forget the first time they meet me.
and by great i mean awful. but still: most people will never forget the first time they meet me.

i suppose you want to know how i met shlee.

that's valid. i will tell you:

i grew up in a wee little town called frontier. it was a prairie town with one school and one gas station and no hospital and not even a swimming pool. 

not even a swimming pool.

--but we did have a sketchy little golf course.

[i've never been golfing.]

in a little town like that, every new girl was a celebrity. they didn't come often, but when they did, it was an event. every girl wanted to be her best friend, every guy wanted to date her. before anyone even knew her name or anything else about her. she was new; that was enough.

in the case of shlee, i had a wee advantage over everyone else. because, though she didn't know it at the time, we had a mutual acquaintance: my cousin, alyssa, who had called me up the day before school started back up for the fall and informed me that one of her camp friends was moving to frontier.

sweet. i had two questions: a) does she know i know you? and b) what are some or most or all of her deepest darkest secrets?
alyssa was more than helpful.

so anyway. how i met shlee.
it went something like this:

i walked into school, backpack most likely completely empty except for two chocolate bars and my discman and a cd book, big grin on, right up to the new girl.

"hey." i'm friendly like that.
"hi..." she's friendly too.
"i'm suzy."
"ashley."
"i know."

shlee made a puzzled face.
i don't remember for sure, but i probably pulled a chocolate bar out then. i was always eating a chocolate bar. the milk chocolate kind with almonds in it.
those were the days.

we talked about something or another. she told me she was from consul, i told her i'd never lived anywhere but frontier. she said something about the move and i listened for a bit and then i said i liked music and asked if she liked music and she said yeah she did like music and i told her what music was good because i was cocky and kind of considered myself an authority on music and then i told her i was a little bit psychic and i had a dog and also too many cats--

"psychic?"
"yeah. a little bit."
"oh..."
"yeah. like... i just know things. about you, even."
i squinted at her. i didn't know how to act psychic. i didn't believe in psychic...ness. psycnicity. psychosis? psychisiousosity.something. the point is not that.
the point is that i just squinted a lot at her forehead, as if i could see through it. it was a little bit awkward, it being the first time we'd met and all.

"i know you had a crush on a guy this past summer at um...camp. you went to summer camp and had a crush on a guy. a guy with an afro."

she squinted back at me, but didn't say anything. i'm socially awkward and don't know when to quit, so i kept going. i told her his name, what he looked like, his brother's name. her eyes got huge. i kept a straight face and chomped on my chocolate bar. if i remember right, i was kind of rude and didn't offer her any. for all i did know about her, i didn't know yet if she was a germophobe.
anyway, i told her a little bit later that i wasn't psychic but i wasn't lying about having a dog and we became best friends and had marker fights in chem class and had an adventure in a back alley in a big city with a bunch of hippies.
she's all grown up and married now, and has a blog of her own.

i'm going to very ungracefully end this post now because i've plum run out of words.
the end.