Tuesday, July 18, 2006

A Study in Opposites

Living near Hillz is great. For years now, our friendship has survived with the occasional visits and the frequent and very, very lengthy phone conversations. The thing with Hillz and I is that we can talk and talk and talk and if you asked either of us what it was we talked about, we probably couldn't tell you. But more than likely we laughed our asses off to the point of not being able to breathe. These things happen when you've been friends since high school.

For being best friends, Hillz and I have some very remarkable differences. Like, she hates to plan things and I am, (well, let's not mince words shall we?) a super-planner. I'll be sending out an email asking about a movie night two weeks from now and she will be like, "Can you please ask me that day? I can't make plans that far in advance." Or how she can sleep until noon and I have already been up since 7, had breakfast, cleaned my house, went for a walk and found a cure for cancer. She will awake to messages saying, "Get up! You are wasting the day! Let's go do something!" I'm sure she looooves that.

Her home is very minimalist and by that I mean she has barely any furniture and hasn't hung anything on the walls except for the recent addition of a mirror above the fireplace. Hanging that mirror probably took her a couple of hours. Not because she is inept. Oh no, she is very skilled. She's just such a perfectionist that she has to measure, remeasure, use a level, make pencil marks, erase the pencil marks, walk away in frustration, grab a glass of water, pet the cat, watch an episode of Six Feet Under, then remeasure again and finally, hammer a nail in and hang the damn thing. And even then she probably won't be happy with the results. Once, in a different apartment, she asked me to come over to help her rearrange her furniture. When I arrived she had a piece of graph paper and mini cut outs of furniture. "What is this?" I asked inquisitively. "It's my apartment and all its furniture to scale so I can know how to move the furniture." She responded. Wha!? Who does this? That cracked me up. I don't measure, I just use brute strength and visualization to figure out what should go where.

We are like polar opposites of one another. This keeps things interesting. The best of relationships are built upon people's abilities to find commonalities amongst differences. Her yin to my yang. Her Oscar to my Felix. Her introvert to my extrovert. We make it work. And we get to laugh a lot in the process. Besides, the core of who we are is so in sync that these glaringly obvious differences are just here for our amusement. We can look at each other and just laugh at how opposite we are.

Now that is true friendship.

12 comments:

Mr. Rodacre said...

ahhh Hillz...

I am in awe of the graph paper furniture arrangement - I always wanted to try that!

Planning only works for me if I plan vaguely. Everytime I try and plan something (esp. at work) invariably seventeen things pop up that were never in the plan to begin with that require my immediate attention.

And of course I can sleep til noon most days but only because my schedule requires it... =)

I didn't realize that Hillz and I have so much in common... maybe this is why you and I get along so well, Sizz?

Karl said...

Yeah, you and I are definitely yinny-yangy. Except I don't graph paper arrange anything.

egan said...

So I just heard from a Citizen that you moved to Seattle. How do you like it thus far? Welcome.

Claire said...

Will I be considered an uber-geek if I say that I have done graph paper furniture arranging also? And I do use a level when hanging things, but that makes the process go faster for me. It's only mind-numbing if I have to hang more than one thing so that their frames align.

Sigh. Sleeping till noon is good. :)

JustRun said...

It's always strange to me how in some relationships opposite is balancing and in others, it's a source of chaos. Must be because you're both good people and value each other over any personaility trait.
Either that, or you have common ground. Like Tequila. And ice cream. haha :)

Bre said...

That's so lovely! It's always wonderful to have someone you can talk about everything with. It's even more so when that person balances out all of your quirks!

Becky said...

Friends like that are hard to come by, much less living so close to you.

Nihilistic said...

I love when you can talk with someone for hours and not have a clue as to what you talked about...Just laugh and talk...FUN

Amy S. Petrik said...

Your post reminded me of getting a late night email tonight from my long past pal Shazzer tonight. http://greenpotter.blogspot.com/

Peace out, amy

Margaret said...

I love my super planner gal pal, she'll emailed an iterneary for an evening a week in advance, complete with directions, knowing full well that I won't be able to do follow through.

Anonymous said...

We've discussed this:

You + Hillz = Me + Sandra

And it does work. Like magic. :)

sue said...

Okay, I'm officially jealous now.