Birthday

Yesterday was my friend M.'s birthday. She and I were put together by chance our freshmen year of college at eNYU and ended up living together all 4 years (2 years here and 2 years here where I was dorm president and she was vice president.) We both laugh when we recall our perceptions of each other when we first met. I had recently returned from spending a month in southern France as part of a cultural exchange program. I was still pretty shy back then and I spent time listening to a French pop music album; she thought I was a little weird. I was in awe and intimidated by M. who is 6 inches taller than me, beautiful, and was fashionably dressed like her bi-racial "sister" Jennifer Beals from Flashdance.

We lived with many different roommates over those 4 years which only served to forge our close bond. I'm so happy that over 2 decades later, I feel like I have a sister in M.

She was indecisive about what to do for her actual birthday (although she's having a gathering of friends on Saturday night) and finally asked if I'd want to attend a Barack Obama rally in Washington Square Park. Since moving down to Mexxico, my faint interest in American politics has waned that much more and I have barely even followed the news to know who the candidates for president are. But of course I'd heard of Barack Obama and I was really curious to see him speak. So I printed off a "rapid pass" sent from his website and met M. near the park at 4:45 with gates set to open at 5pm.

The lines were crazy long so M., short on patience and long on creativity and spunk, suggested we try to get in to the press area using her network television work ID. I was skeptical about how we could both get in with it since I didn't have anything to prove I worked there and I didn't even bring a decent camera with me. M. thought we should give it a try and if it didn't work, we could just get back into line, after telling people in front and back of us to save our spot. It turned out the girl in front of us was an eNYU journalism student and M. encouraged her to come along with us. She persuaded a cop to let us through a barrier (telling him we all worked together) so we didn't have to walk so far out of our way. M. flashed her ID every step of the way and I had my wallet out and tried to look assured. When we got up to the press entrance, it became clear, they weren't being that strict; we managed to score press passes which got us into a quick line into the event.

That whole experience was more impressive than Obama's speech. And M. told the young journalism student it was a good lesson in how you have to be creative, persistent, and persuasive if you want to be a good journalist. I would agree with the same for a good photographer. If you want to see a little promo piece for Obama's appearance, you can go here. I like him, I trust him, I like what he has to say. But the speech was a little lacking in passion for me and felt more like a pep rally. It was long on platitudes ("I will fight for a living wage, not just a minimum wage") and felt lacking in substance. That said, I support his run and was really glad to hear and see him in person.

The evening makes me smile. It's true M., what I've always admired and liked about her. And I feel that having her influence in my life at that age and crucial period, helped forge my more outgoing and spunky personality. I couldn't have been put with a better person to be my roommate and to become my sister for life.