Best Friends

My daughter has a best friend and she’s only two. I would think that, at such an age, she would not be able to comprehend the idea of friendship. She gets it, though. It’s not the kind of friend you find on Facebook. There was no need to confirm or explain the details. It just automatically happened. One day, she looked up and there he was. She smiled and that was all it took.

She makes time to sit and watch Sprout or just run around and play with her friend. They don’t spend every waking moment together, but they are pretty close. My wife asks her what she thinks of her friend and she simply replies, “My favorite.” They share adventures together and sometimes a cup of “pretend” tea. There has even been a muffin or two served. She even wears an oven mitt when she gets into her play oven to retrieve them. My wife pretends not to notice because she likes to just sit and watch them play, uninterrupted. They even share secrets. She has whispered in her friend’s ear a few times, although she doesn’t understand the concept of volume enough to bring it down to where nobody else can hear it.

I’m sure, one day, like most of our childhood friends, they will grow distant. Eventually, she’ll move on to new friends, but I hope she never forgets her because the first “best friend” is the one by which all others shall be measured against. I remember my first best friend when I was a child. I was probably only two or three at the time but, I still recall the times we spent together. It’s not the same thing, but with friends, it doesn’t matter. Friendship is universal, no matter what the case.

Little One's Best Friend

Project 10 to the 100 update

Way back in the beginning of the year I entered into a Google run contest called Project 10 to the 100th. It was an effort to pick an idea that could do the most good in the world. The winner would get financial backing or help in securing the financial backing to make the idea a reality.

The original vote date was in February. Then, it got pushed back to March. Well, after months of waiting for Google to evaluate the over 150,000 applicants, they’ve finally selected finalists to be voted upon. Unfortunately, I am not one of those finalists.

Now, I’m not expecting anyone to have actually been waiting for an update, but I figured I had to at least practice due diligence with having posted the information back at the beginning of the year. If you still want to participate and choose the best entry from the finalists, go ahead. May the best idea win.

Random Access Memory

Every time I hear Blind Mellon’s "No Rain" I am immediately taken back to my first year of college at Coastal Carolina University. It happens to me all the time. I’m driving along, skipping through radio stations and something like Blind Mellon or Hootie and the Blowfish comes up on some retro lunch hour dentist office station. Immediately, there I am, a Freshman at CCU, unpacking laundry from a Pizza Hut branded University of Pittsburgh drawstring duffel bag that I inherited from my brother. That, in turn, reminds me how I used to hate walking from the dorms down to the laundry room, which was about a half mile away. I once tried to ride my mountain bike there while carrying all my laundry and ended up wrecking in the middle of the road from being unbalanced. Then, that memory starts a domino rally of other memories like riding my bike all over campus to classes or to the Student Union to play Mortal Kombat in the small game room on campus. That throws me into a memory of being in the game room at the Student Union at the University of Pittsburgh, playing Soul Caliber. That fast forwards me into that following summer when I was working at Idlewild Park and watching people drop hundreds of quarters into the Mortal Kombat II machine while I stood there scratching at this huge gash on my leg that I got while sweeping the tracks over the trestle bridge that spans the Loyalhanna river. I missed a step from one tie to the next and fell into the open space. There is still an inch long indentation on my shin where I banged against the tie as I went through. Sweeping those tracks makes me think of Billy Joel’s "River of Dreams" song which was out about that time in my life. "River of Dreams" makes me think of the movie Dreamscape with Dennis Quaid and David Patrick Kelly. David Patrick Kelly makes me think of Jackie Earle Haley because of them using their full names which makes me think of that Nightmare on Elm Street remake that is coming out next year bringing me right back to the present day.

You ever have that happen? Somehow a sound or smell will immediately trigger a memory so vividly you feel like you are right back in that moment? Then, you shuttle around your life through a series of disconnected and unrelated images that somehow all gets tied together in one bigger string like a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon puzzler. Maybe I’m just crazy. Maybe I just had too much Lo Mein for lunch. Still, the ability for me to recall all of those mundane activities in my life is ironic in that I can’t remember what I was watching on television yesterday that featured an actress that I like. I’m recalling minute amounts of time over the last 24 years of my life in the matter of a couple of seconds but can’t remember something that happened in the last 24 hours. Is that a sign of Alzheimer’s or me just being a real dork? Don’t answer that.

Oh, and that reference to Kevin Bacon just made me think of his movie Stir of Echoes which featured a cover of The Rolling Stones "Paint It Black" which made me think of Matt Dillon because he hosted this show on Nickelodeon called "Wild Rides" which was about Roller Coasters and featured a bit with a scary looking custodian riding a coaster set to... "Paint it Black." It aired once New Year’s Eve in 1983 which makes me think of a friend who used to hang out with me on New Year’s Eve while our parents went out. That makes me think of the one time I went to a friend’s house for New Year’s Eve with my girlfriend from high school and guess what CD my friend had playing in the background…. "River of Dreams".