Kim, the Scrabble Warrior

The other night I met with my friend from high school. Really, she's one of only a couple who are left that I still stay in contact with. Thanks to facebook I keep tabs on several friends, but really Kim's the one I see most often. We meet every couple of months to play Scrabble and catch up.
Even though I beat her by about 50 points this time around, we're pretty equally matched in Scrabble so it makes it more fun. What I like about Kim, aside from her being plaina wesome, is that she really hasn't changed a lot. And i don't feel like I have either. so when we hang out, I don't feel like I have to impress her or prove anything.
She is immensly more talented, smart and successful than i am/was/ever will be so I'm just glad she still likes me.
I met her in freshman math class. we were in this block so we had all four of our afternoon classes together, along with band in the morning. We met because our mutual friends didn't really understand math. We were all in on that together, since our teacher really only cared about baseball.
After that year we had several more classes together. The most memorable being the humanities/history block, and AP Chemistry. What sucked was that she always got better grades than me, no matter who worked harder. Actually she was usually the one working harder. Which proves how much smarter she was. She ended up being valedictorian. I sat somewhere in the middle of the class, doing what I needed to to get by.
we have a lot of great memories. One of the best is how we used to make faces at each other when we were giving speeches. It usually involved this ridiculous thing from Monty Python's Flying Circus "And now for something completely different. A man with a tape recorder up his nose." Yeah. It's hilarious.
We also passed from class to class chanting things about our teachers. That was awesome. we were awesome. The rest of the world didn't understand. We weren't popular. And we just didn't care.
Now, married with two kids each, we're still awesome. And that's what keeps me going back to get slaughtered at Scrabble once in a whlie. Because I like people who don't make me feel like I need to be a certain way. Who know the "real me" so to speak. And she does. Or at least, the part of me that wore moose slippers to school, made fun of teachers, wrote hilarious notes, nearly failed math, and who had her own agenda. Sometimes I miss those days. Most of the time I'm glad we're not there anymore.


oh, and unrelated to this post, she is also part owner of the local Beef O'Brady's, as well as the manager. Which might be the only claim to fame I actually have at this time in life. If you'd even call it fame.