there are a lot of you, but these are the big kahunas of the day:
jason. even though i talked to you on the phone today while i was at the swimming beach, even though i could go a year without seeing you and it would be like no time has passed, even though we will probably have lunch together this week and talk in great detail about everything and nothing, i am missing just being around you all the time. i kind of wish we were neighbors because you are just that much a part of my life.
carrie. you win. every memory i have with you has a moment of either supreme hilarity (all flight deck moments, in particular) or supreme common understanding (what was the name of the book we were going to write?) attached to it. and it will be fall before i see you again because you are a bad ass jet-setting mamma jamma who just doesn’t make it to these parts often. and i hate that. but i heart you.
jamie. jamie. jamie. thank god you are moving to lawrence. i am not kidding when i say that your proximity to me will save the monkey-fighting day. you are one of the friends i have made as an adult that i truly cannot believe wasn’t my friend when we were kids. you listen, laugh, and love as hard and as strong as any other person on earth, maybe even harder. perhaps you are what my street slang student had in mind when he referenced things that ‘go hard.’ jamie, you go hard. and i love you for it. hurry back to ks.
erin and ben. if you don’t know i miss you by now you will never never never know it, ooh ooh ooh ooh. you will be in lawrence in eight days and i will be at your house every morning, ready to play in the pool, hear stories about china, pet jbj, make you coffee, just watch you both sleep…wait, that was creepy. seriously, though, alex and i love you guys so much, and we miss you dearly. we cannot wait to share our lives with you again. and erin, i found the most killer consignment shop here: we are so buying you new ‘back from china’ clothes.
lisa. please move next door to me. the guy who lives in the other townhouse is planning to move this year, and you an john and lord and grey would love the place: it comes complete with kickass neighbors. at least on this side. some of the other houses have some ybor city worthy trash living in them, but i promise to distract you from them. you are the best thing i got out of living in florida. i miss you every day.
frank bascombe. get your head out and be the man you were in ‘the sportswriter.’ i hate this version of you in ‘independence day.’
I. Heart. You.