Put your hands up for Detroit - I love this city!

An ode to Smith (aka Susan, Red, Home Skillet, Smalls, Homegirl) is an ode to the hive mind more or less. The hive mind is a type of collective consciousness that Smith and I share. As a result of the hive mind, many people get a little twitchy when we say the same thing or gesticulate in the same manner at the exact same moment. For example, tonight while on the phone Smith said "You'd makeout anywhere" at the very second I said "I'd makeout anywhere." When Smith wants to shop, I usually do too. The hive mind rocks out at the gym and goes to Whole Foods and Trader Joe's together to buy the same groceries (minus green goop - this is where the hive mind malfunctions). On the way to said destinations, the hive mind sings along to "you can't see tits on the radio, I'll give you five fingers for a one man show!" We are convinced that most peeps at school think we are a couple, since we can typically be found in each other's company. Need one of us and you're likely to get both. We were also both meant to be born and raised in a tropical environment given our unusually strong affection for all things pineapple. Smith is the one who searches high and low for things like pineapple jam with me.

Aside from the hive mind, Smith joins the disco bus at an ungawdly hour AND brings blow pops to the party! She also makes a last minute run to Anthropologie (otherwise, if I'm there she is as well), to get a new outfit for a date that was lamely upgraded at the last minute, bringing forth my spazztastic self.

Red also gets particularly rageful, especially when skeezy crackheads call her "red." She accepts and understands my fits of rage and encourages me when I tell her that I want to put my fist through a wall. She even devised a plan with me - after graduation we are smashing shizz in the street. She was quick to point out that we will need protective eyewear. Oh, and she got me saying "shizz."

Not many people like soft serve from McDonald's. She reignited my fondness for it - especially when (as Susan nicknamed it) you get a flaming torch. She does not judge me when we go to 1984, I get fully loaded, and start engaging in behavior I'd rather not remember the next day.

Susan lets me spend inordinate amounts of money without pointing out that I either don't have it or that I should spend it on more practical things. In fact, she put me on the path to using war paint, and now I use it almost every day. Oftentimes, I call or IM Susan in the morning to see whether she thinks what I want to wear will look good. Susan is THE ONE who broke me of wearing lots of black. I am not to the point of "dressing like candy" or wearing all colors at once, but I now own orange clothing and few black things.

She has a teddy bear made of alpaca, and she lets me cuddle it when we watch movies at her place. She appreciates the value of a glue gun. She embraces my predilection for boxes and nicknamed me the Box Ghost after a character on Danny Phantom. "I'm the Box Ghost - Beware!" is sometimes a random interjection into a conversation of ours.