One of my most vivid memories from childhood involves eating in a restaurant with my mom and two younger brothers. The three of us kids were all under the age of 10 and seated in a booth, facing my mom, eating French fries and getting along wonderfully, as the Prandato children generally do.
Jonny, Dana and I rarely fight -- truly, I cannot remember the last argument we had, though I'm assuming it took place during one of our formative, angsty teenage years -- and, even when we were younger, we valued each other's company in a way that not many people shared with their siblings at that age.
I believe this is what people are referring to when they say "#squadgoals" mostly because our sweatshirt game was so on point.
Toward the end of our lunch that day, an older woman approached our table. We were initially confused by her presence, but it soon became clear she was there with the intention of complimenting my mom on her mothering-skills.
"I've been watching your family non-stop from across the room," she said, which now would probably seem very creepy, but in 2000, was quite sweet. "And, you just have the most well-behaved children I've ever seen."
My mom thanked her for her kind words and gave her standard, somewhat joking reply for describing the three of us -- "angels on the street, devils at home," a phrase I somehow inappropriately connected to Usher after his song "Yeah!" came out and Ludacris rapped about how his ideal woman was an angel in the street, but you know, a freak in the bed. (The inevitable association between a rap star "getting some" and a phrase I heard often in my childhood confused me greatly in the early 2000s).
But, truly, we were really, really well-behaved children, so much so that my mother always says training our dog, Tony, was harder than bringing up the three of us. Even when we were mad or frustrated with each other, the three of us knew how to keep our bad behavior at home, not in public.
Of course, while our sweater game was as close to perfection as you could possibly get, the Prandato children are far from perfect and, sometimes, we'd disobey Ludacris and, by association, also our parents. While my mother can almost certainly point out more times we embarrassed her with our bad behavior, I can truly only think of one instance -- on the middle of a lake in Idaho.
As most people know, I grew up in Idaho in a beautiful little resort town called Sandpoint. During the winter, everyone skied on our gorgeous ski mountain, Schweitzer, and summertime was completely devoted to spending on Lake Pend Oreille, the ear-shaped lake where we'd swim, boat and, over the 17 years we lived there, lose more items than I can even remember (including, but not limited to, my absolute favorite towel in the whole world. And, also, as I grew older, more than one of my cell phones).
Lake Pend Oreille is huge -- it's over 40 miles wide (not, as it would turn out, 40 miles deep, which is what my best friend Chelsea and I once accidentally told an entire party of unsuspecting people in Muncie when asked about where we grew up). Despite Sandpoint in itself being tiny, the lake was massive. It was possible to be boating all day and feel as if you were completely alone on the water, but because everyone in Sandpoint is ridiculously friendly, whenever you would run into another boat, it was common to stop, chat and probably share a few drinks while floating in your respectable vehicles.
For some reason on this particular day (I'm 99% sure it was the day I lost my favorite towel), Jonny, Dana and I were not acting like our normal, little public angels. We were actually being pretty terrible children when our parents boat pulled up next to another boat and began to chat with the man. At one point, the three of us were pouting, fighting and being so unruly that my mother came over to discipline us and tell us how rude we were being.
I very, very clearly remember looking up at my mother, squinting my eyes and defiantly saying, "Well, we can act however we want -- it's not like we're ever going to see these people again."
Her anger was so palpable, people could probably feel it across the entire 40 miles of the lake.
Now, we'll fast-foward to almost a year later -- we were in New York, visiting my grandparents and, also, going to the mall, partly because my grandfather always took us to Toys-R-Us whenever we came to visit, but mostly due to the fact that the clothing company my father worked for had recently opened a new store at that location. We walked inside the building and, as soon as I got through the doors, I literally ran into a man. Apologizing profusely, I looked up and, in horror and disbelief, realized it was somehow the same exact man from the boat I'd told my mother I would never see again.
It is my belief that this was one of my mom's favorite parenting moments and biggest victories.
That was my first experience with incredible coincidences, but things like this seem to happen to me all the time. Take, for example, this past December when my brother Jonny and I were applying for my apartment on the Upper East Side. We'd battled Snooki, put down our deposit and hoped for the best when we got on the 6 to head to the bus station and go back to Boston.
The train was crowded and I was standing, squeezed next to Jonny and looking down at the guy sitting in front of me, a man who looked so uncannily like Chris Brown that I had to do a double-take. Because his similarity to Chris Brown had put him on my radar, I happened to notice other details about him, like the fact he'd recently acquired a new pair of Beats headphones. I say this because he had multiple pairs of Beats headphones -- an older-looking pair around his neck and a separate, brand-new pair still in the box.
"That's nice," I thought to myself. "It's such a good feeling to get new headphones. I bet he's so excited to use his new ones."
Almost immediately after this thought crossed my mind, Chris Brown looks somewhat cautiously around the train… then proceeds to take four more pairs of brand-new Beats headphones out from his shirt.
This led me to accurately believe that Chris Brown just robbed a Beats store.
Three weeks later, I was officially a resident of New York City and heading back uptown from work when someone violently jostled me. I turned around only to come face-to-face once again with Chris Brown… with MORE stolen Beats. We briefly stared at each other in recognition, then I got off at my stop, wondering if I'll ever be as good at anything as he is at stealing headphones.
Because, really -- if anyone has learned anything from reading my blog, it's probably that I am as not good at dating as I am at deciphering Jason Derulo lyrics. Although I love nothing more than drinking tea and being in bed at the same time as my 86-year-old neighbor, Sally, lately I've been trying to take advantage of being 23 in the city that (literally) never sleeps and so, have been forcing myself to stay out past 10:30 and do some sort of activity (that is not yoga) one night per week.
Most of the time these activities are dates and, on this particular week, it was a date with a guy named Sam.
Considering I absolutely did not want to go on this date due entirely to being extremely exhausted from work and the tantalizing thought of leftover Chinese food in my fridge, my first date with Sam actually went fairly beautifully. We met up for beers and, after bonding over our extreme love for books and discovering we were very, very into the same types of bands, I was surprised that our date had been going on so late as we walked through Grand Central to take the subway back to our respective apartments.
We were literally the only two people in Grand Central, an experience in-and-of-itself, and as we were saying goodbye to each other under the beautiful ceilings, I got inspired and invited him on a whim to join me for dinner the next night with two of my friends. This led to the disastrous dinner where Zach drunkenly ate all of my rice with Sam's fork, then Irish-exited and proceeded to leave us with the bill for his beers.
(I'm in the process of coming to terms with the fact that Zach Groth is trying to ruin my life).
After the rice incident, Sam and I (miraculously!) went on more dates -- sans Zach and sans rice and, you know what? They were all good. We went to bookstores and Whole Foods and, once, even ended up by his apartment in Queens, walking around looking at gorgeous homes after eating burgers and chasing the chickens that inexplicably were roaming the street.
It was on this date in Queens -- after chasing chickens had tired us out -- when Sam and I were laying on his couch, discussing how much larger his apartment was than mine. When we met, he'd been in the process of moving from Manhattan to Queens and, as someone who has no idea how I will ever get my furniture out of my sixth-floor walk-up, I was enthralled at hearing about how moving in New York City actually works.
I was reluctant still to bring up Zach since the rice incident had occurred very, very recently, but in this case, he was relevant. At the time Sam and I were having this discussion, Zach was actively looking for a new place to live and I'd promised I would help him move, mostly because he has like maybe thirteen possessions and most of them are wine and an air mattress, so I wasn't too worried about the logistics and heavy lifting of the situation. Sam, in return, told me about how he'd also promised his friend he'd help her move because she'd helped him, though it was going to be later in the summer and therefore much, much hotter. Also, there was a high probability she owned way more than thirteen things, none of which were wine and one that was definitely a real bed.
We were quiet for a second, thinking probably about lifting boxes in the heat (him) or being stabbing (me, it's my biggest fear and I think of this often). Then, he kissed me and I decided to verbalize my thoughts about being stabbed, which led to an in-depth discussion on the worst way to die, all while watching a pirated version of Birdman.
All-in-all, a fairly successful date.
But, eventually, things with Sam just stopped, which wasn't necessarily a good or bad thing -- just a thing. To be honest, I think he was overly concerned I wanted to be in a relationship when, really, I was more interested in being the type of friends that hang out sometimes in his air-conditioned apartment, particularly when it's 96 degrees out. (Zach, for the record, FOR SURE thinks it ended because of my stabbing comment and has all but asked me to stop talking to men since he believes I'm ruining his chances for male friendship).
Unrelated, but important -- Sam looked too oddly similar to my ex-boyfriend, with whom I was involved in so many yelling matches with during college that people would (embarrassingly) just come to expect it whenever we were at parties together. I actually had a slight form of PTSD when he kissed my forehead after waking up from a nap, finding myself disoriented and thinking I was in a dorm room in Indiana when, clearly, I was very much in Queens. So, it's probably better we stopped things earlier rather than later and, if this was a normal story or if I lived a normal life, that would be the end of that.
Unfortunately for me, but luckily for this blog post, this is not a normal story.
Because Zach considers me dating as an easy way to make guy friends, we were (of course) drinking wine together one night at our friend Abby's when he started asking me questions about Sam. We were still somewhat going on dates at this point, so I was answering fairly easily -- where did he go to school? where is he from? will he be my friend? -- when, halfway into it, Zach suddenly stopped me.
"I'm pretty sure Sam's town is where Michelle is from," he said, Michelle being a friend from college who had also recently moved to NYC. "How weird would it be if they knew each other?"
I agreed that it would be weird. A quick text to Michelle proved that not only did they know each other, they were CHILDHOOD BEST FRIENDS.
We were all laughing to the point of tears when we realized that, out of all the men in New York City, I somehow was going out with someone already so closely linked to me. But, I absolutely lost it when Michelle mentioned in her text she had helped him move, coming to the realization that, when Sam and I were laying on his couch discussing Zach's upcoming move, he'd been talking about Michelle the entire time.
Now, not to take this blog away from the point of coincidences, but I feel like I have to say a lot of people don't understand the relationship Zach and I have. Even though we're very platonic, we are constantly getting asked if we're dating by friends and strangers alike. This is mostly because we're comfortable doing "date-y" stuff together, like paying for each other's tabs or being each other's emergency contact, a job I failed miserably at when Zach sliced off half his finger while I was drinking on a beach in Delaware.
We realize it, though. Last Friday, the two of us were splitting a bottle of wine at my apartment before meeting Liz in the East Village. At some point, that bottle of wine turned into three and, as we paused our conversation for a second, "The Hills" by the Weeknd came on. After three bottles of wine, I'll verbalize pretty much whatever I'm thinking and, so, the following conversation occurred:
"This song really makes me want to kiss someone," I told him, chewing on my pizza.
"Yeah, me too," he said, downing the rest of his red wine (and, also, somehow getting it all over my white wall, a fact I realized in the morning because we had been drinking in the dark).
The two of us sat there, thoughtfully listening and Zach told me, "You know, if this situation was literally anyone but us, we'd have kissed by now."
"I know," I told him, still chewing my pizza, "We have a weird relationship."
Then, instead of kissing, we took this photo, which after THAT much wine, I thought was the best photo that had ever been taken of me possibly ever and made him post it all over the Internet.
I may have been mistaken.
But, that's our friendship. And, besides us, the only person I think who has really summed it up is my brother.
Jonny and I were on the phone one night this summer and I was telling him about the sheer amount of rice Zach had eaten on my second date with Sam. Laughing, Jonny said, "I feel like you and Zach could be in a sitcom. Like, you've just moved the city and you're starting to date. He's your best friend and you're platonic, so he doesn't want to ruin things for you with other guys. But, he ends up ruining them anyway. Not out of jealously -- just because he's Zach."
Nothing has ever described the relationship between the two of us better and the concept was only re-enforced when Zach finally found an apartment.
A few weeks after Sam and I just stopped talking, Zach ended up getting an apartment and, weirdly enough, it's only three blocks away from me. Like, we literally lived further away from each other when we were going to college in Indiana. As with any event big-or-small in our lives, Zach text our group text with Ashley to tell us he was moving in with Michelle. I was stoked to have two other Ball State people moving to the Upper East Side and was very glad I would get to be neigh-BROs with both of them. I congratulated him on finding a place to live, told him I'd still help move his air mattress, then went back to cooking my dinner.
Twenty minutes later, I had a revelation.
The moment I confirmed Zach Groth is trying to ruin my life.
After this revelation, I immediately retracted my previous promise to help Zach move.
A few weeks after Zach officially became an Upper East Side resident, I was at work and the elevator was about to close. The man inside held it open for me, but barely, and I thanked him for getting the door.
"Oh, you're lucky I did that," he said to me in a condescending tone. "I've gotten to the point in my life where I don't really hold elevator doors open for people anymore. I figure -- am I really ever going to see them again?"
It wasn't the time or place to tell him of all of my stories about how wrong he really was because we'd arrived at my floor and I was running late to work. And, maybe still, someone who wouldn't hold open a door wouldn't necessarily care about the boat incident or Chris Brown's Beats or even the fact that, out of all the people in New York, my best friend moved in with the best friend of the guy I'm no longer seeing -- but, really, he should.
Because, in reality, New York City is just NOT that big.