at the library

most of my text conversations with the former 786 are about movies.  things used to be different.  he used to just be called 786 and we'd talk about movies in person.

joel was a library security guard at the byu library and when i wasn't on a project, i would often go there to read or do scripture study, just to get out of the house.  and on days when he was working the front desk, i would inevitably stop and talk with him for... sometimes an hour or so.

five years ago today i was doing just that when from the office behind him came a nice-looking girl in a white shirt with a red ribbon in her hair, as a subtle observance of valentine's day.  she cheerfully came up and quipped with us for a few minutes.  she was smart and witty and i liked her, so i introduced myself.  she laughed with us a little longer then excused herself to head down to the special collections area on the first floor to practice her dancing.

i watched her leave then turned to joel.  i'm not one to just meet a girl and want to start dating her.  generally i like to know girl for a while before i get into something.  but she seemed pretty cool.

"can you give me her phone number?" i asked.

this was how i met the great laurie jayne.

a day or two later, i called her.  she was impressed that i was just leaving a photo shoot (never mind that they were little league shots....)  i was impressed that she was a jazz singer.  we talked on the phone again the next night.  she had a strange fascination with the beatles' "maxwell's silver hammer."  later, i bewilderedly told my sister, "i think i may have met a girl."  

i later found out that, on the day that i met her, she also went back to joel and asked him about me as well.  in an awesomely playful act that would make amelie poulian proud, she blogged a short post entitled, "this one's for you, jeff", waiting for me to find her, then anonymously began posting comments on my blog.  i thought it was awesome.

being ever so literate, she took me to my first jane austen movie at the international cinema.  we started dating.  it turned out that i knew her brother.  her family was cool.  i bought her calvin and hobbes books when she was sick.  she thought i was awesome.  she was bold and brash.  i freaked out because i thought she saw more awesomeness in me than there was.  we kind of broke up.  i tried to talk my fears out with my sister and gave laurie another chance.  then, through a mistaken text that said more than i'd originally intended, we broke up.  it was march 14.  we had known each other for all of one month.

we never had time to get serious, but i surprisingly found myself missing her.

there's a jewel-encrusted coke
can coming up on my left...

for the most part, our lives went their separate ways for a while.  i don't remember how long it was, but many months (a year?) later, we started talking again.  she had recently broken up with a guy that she really, really liked and so we talked some.  i made her a cd.  we went to general conference together.  walking back to my car, we started an impromptu tap dance (until something else caught my eye.)

in an effort for each of us to move on from past relationships, she and i decided to have a burning.  it was beautiful and cathartic and she played her ukelele afterwards.  that summer, she did an internship in new york city, working for a newspaper there.  i made her some mixed cds for her trip then sent her customer evaluation forms regarding them.  while she was away, we occasionally wrote and mailed real letters to each other.
she graduated from byu and moved to arizona, working as the county p.r. person or something.  she was pretty official, at any rate.  she would occasionally come back to provo to visit her multitude of friends and mark and i took her out shooting.
possibly the greatest contribution she gave to my life was that she introduced me to tally hall.  if not for her, none of you would know tally hall.
blessed.

with my sister now married, laurie became my friend that i talked to.  becky got married on a friday.  my best friend jack got married the next day.  as i was waiting for his reception to start, i was feeling very much alone and so called laurie.  she was invaluable.  and she would tell me her adventures of life in a little rural town in arizona.  in the spring of 2008 she told me about a date she went on with a guy who was nice enough but she wasn't really interested, yet he asked her out on a second date.

i think that the next time i talked with her was a few months later, when i figured i would call to congratulate her on her engagement.  her head was so high in the clouds i could hardly call it a conversation.

i don't think i've seen laurie since she's been married, but she's sent me a couple of sublime mixed cds and we've still kept in touch through this wonderful blogging thing.  and we've even written an email to each other now and then.

i've sometimes thought about this odd transiency of friendships, how someone can be such a good friend and yet as the tides of time ebb and flow, some will seem leave our life relatively quickly, without much fanfare or even pain.  so it goes.  but we get to cross paths with some seriously dang people along the way.
this one's for you, laurie.