"A friend is the one who comes in when the whole world has gone out."

(Thank you for the quote, Ms. Grace Pulpit.)

Friendship.

According to Facebook, I currently have 1,289 friends. And that’s just on Facebook. Forget about MySpace (which I stopped checking long, long ago) or, dare I even mention it, Friendster. Now, do I really have that many “friends”? Of course not. While there are many different levels of friendship, I generally consider friendship to entail having some sort of meaningful and positive connection with another person, to be comprised of the tenets of loyalty, trust, and mutual respect, and to include some measure of sacrificing, or the willingness to sacrifice part of oneself for the benefit of the other party. Sometimes, we must sacrifice pride in order to allow for the forgiveness of wrongdoing. Other times, we sacrifice our time to do good for the other person, whether it be providing a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on, or running out to buy chocolate and all the other necessary accoutrement for nursing another friend back to life after a horrible break-up or similar tragedy. I hope all of this is common knowledge and I’m just driveling on about a bunch of obvious nonsense…

Now, I know this may sound like I’m currently hallucinating butterflies and rainbows and puffy hearts dance in front of my eyes, but friendship is everywhere. If you know what to look for…

My last night in New York, all hell broke loose and, without getting into the details, I’ll just disclose that I was on the verge of spending a very cold night being homeless on the streets of New York City, desperately trying to find my way to Penn Station to make my train back to D.C. the following day. This doesn’t sound quite so bad, except that I can’t navigate my way around NYC even if some thug had me at gunpoint, yelling at me to tell him how to get to the Empire State Building and it was literally only three blocks away. Also, I hate the cold. And I imagine I would hate having to spend any period of time being homeless. Just thinking logically here, you know.

Anyway, this particular story of friendship involves a beautiful young woman who barely knows me save for the fact that, coincidentally, we’re both Alpha Phis (P.S. I LOVE when that happens!) and we spent an afternoon exploring the Upper East Side together a couple days before what we shall call…“The Crisis” occurred. For my safety, she chose to be present with me when The Crisis went down, lest there be, well, a crisis. And when you-know-what hit the fan, she stood up for me and marched proudly out of the room to run down the apartment building stairs after me to rescue me. Forget whatever implications this had for her in the whole messy situation – to her, it was an afterthought. It didn’t matter.

Perhaps without the details of The Crisis, this doesn’t seem to mean all that much so far. But please bear with me and trust me – this girl saved me, not just from the general peril of that particular neighborhood of NYC at those hours of the night, but also from a complete emotional meltdown. She ran after me, took half of my heavy luggage, and looped her elbow through mine, leading me to a street where we could catch a cab back to her apartment, about a half hour away. She refused to let me pay for anything (including the expensive cab ride) the next several hours she spent taking care of me, making sure that I was warm, comfortable, and had a glass of wine in hand. (Delicious, real Italian dessert wine.)

She stayed awake with me until we were both slurring our words with exhaustion, comforting and reassuring me, listening to me ramble and cry and diverge into various anecdotes that were completely relevant to, well, nothing really. She let her adorable and sweethearted Shitzu sleep curled up next to my legs. And when our “nap” turned into my missing my train completely, she spent the day devoted to my every need, from spending an inordinate amount of time talking me through the maze of my very muddled thoughts to taking me out for a perfect bon voyage dinner at an adorable little French place in her neighborhood (on her, of course). She escorted me all the way to my gate at Penn Station that night (being sensitive to the fact that I can’t even navigate a train station, let alone The Big Apple), and insisted I send her an I’m-home-safe text when I got back to my apartment just before 1 a.m.

She warmly embraced me, air-blew a kiss my way, and she still hasn’t let go. Every day, she checks on me, she cares how my day went, what I did, and we laugh. I mean really laugh. It’s one of those incredible friendships you only come across a couple times in your life, maybe a few if you’re lucky. Let alone in a strange, unfamiliar city, on a horrible crisis night…

And, with that, there’s a “Sex and the City” marathon on and it’s time for me to open a bottle of wine. Hopefully, my spiel on friendship made some modicum of sense.

A toast: to the beginning of a magical, and very miraculous, friendship, and…well, it’s undeniable, to the power of an Alpha Phi sisterhood.

aoe to the dipper and back to you, Janeen. 

WD-40 = ...Victory? Yes. Yes, it does.

My last full day in New York City (yes, I realize this was three days ago, but this post is so necessary): I stretched my long weekend to almost an entire week when my second interview with H________ got rescheduled for Thursday. If I had to sum up the whole experience in one word, it would probably be “WD-40.” Why? Why, I’ll tell you why.

After leaving Marlena’s apartment with Juan to meet her, her friend Sylvana, and one of my sorority sisters, Lauren, I was on my way back to Marlena’s apartment. Being me, I was too terrified to take the subway (during my visit here, we have officially established my list of irrational phobias: the New York train system, airports [but not flying – just airports], stairs [really, though], et al), so Juan put me in a cab back to Washington Heights. I manage to figure out, like any five-year-old could, which key was for the building, and then, unlike a five-year-old, I couldn’t find out which key was for the door lock and which was for the deadbolt. So I squish one key into the wrong hole, it magically breaks off at a very inconvenient place (basically, the whole key was stuck in the lock), and I proceed to attempt prying out the key with my fingernails, resulting in a fair amount of lost blood and jagged, really-not-cute nails.

Panicked, I proceed to call Marlena. She tells me where the nearest key store is, and I walk there, hoping to resolve this situation in the hour I have left before Marlena returns from work. Nope. No such luck. My level of surprise is…oh, right, I don’t have one. Because this kind of crap happens all too often. The first locksmith I call refuses to come “so far” at this time of day (5:00 p.m.?). I get out my smart phone (thank God for something) and Google “locksmith” and Marlena’s zip code. I am in tears at this point. The second locksmith agrees to show up (40 minutes later) for a $40 fee service fee, plus the cost of any services rendered. New item on my list of things that I hate more than those cheap, hideous, knock-off versions of Louis Vuitton purses (I don’t even like the real ones): SERVICE FEES.

Then, there’s the lovely joy of this extortionist ass charging me $165 to drill a hole into the deadbolt to get the door open. Miraculously, at this very moment, Marlena appears, copy of key in hand. We open the door, and Marlena, with her incredible verbal prowess, knocks the price of the new deadbolt from $100 to $75.

Shortly after he leaves and I have paid him with all of the precious cash I really can’t spare, Marlena discovers that the locksmith did an extremely shoddy job of “fixing” the deadbolt. It’s sticking, it’s nearly impossible to lock from the inside – everything’s a mess. We call his cell phone. It goes to voicemail. We call again. Voicemail. We call the company. We’re told a myriad of lies for several hours about how “someone will be arriving in less than twenty minutes” to remedy the situation. After the fourth time we’re told this and no one is here, we’re, oh, just a tad pissed. We call the company. Again. We’re hung up on. Repeatedly.

Around midnight, the same technician shows up, muttering about how he’s only here because of “[his] stupid boss.” Marlena is not happy. And with good reason. When she responds to the locksmith’s snarky remarks, he explains that he’s “two minutes from walking away from this job.” Marlena calls his bluff. “Look, I’m doing this service for free,” he says. “You mean the service we already paid for earlier that you didn’t do?” Marlena shoots back.

Finally, finally, he finishes installing and adjusting all the equipment that he should have done hours and hours ago. I am in utter disbelief that I’ve wasted $300 on this technician who’s about as competent as a fruit fly…post-smashed by a kitchen pan.

Marlena, in one of her most brilliant moments yet, sets her sights on revenge. Sure, it’s petty and childish. But do we care? Um, no. Without my even noticing her do it, she swipes the locksmith’s WD-40 from his equipment. VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for the rest of my trip, there was an inordinate amount of drinking with Marlena’s amazing friends. Oh, and Scattergories. And laughter. All the trappings for a perfect getaway. And doors that don’t squeak.