Kewl Krippy

Auntie's dear friend Krippy was down for a very short, but VERY overdue visit this weekend, as she was en route to visit some of her new blogosphere friends. We figured out that it had to be at least 5 years since we had seen each other in person. Without e-mail, digital photos, and the blogs it would have felt much longer, indeed.

Krippy and Auntie Nettie met way back in college. Auntie remembers that they really met the first day of classes -- English I, the course with all the Beowulf and Faerie Queene, Chaucer, Milton, and Old English. We sat next to each other because we were the only freshmen who were so early and because we didn't know anyone else in the room. Once our professor walked in and started talking a mile a minute, all the while dispersing a tome of a syllabus, the gargantuan reading list, and expounding about her academic expectations, our eyes met in a mutual look of sheer, unadulterated, panic. (At least that's how I remember it).

Four years passed, with many an English Lit. and American Lit. class, dire dating debacle, loquacious long-distance relationship-dishing dissection, laborious library shifts, and many mutual friends.* We got our own catch-phrases: "Seagulls on the QUAD!" "What is a kiss?" (Yeah, John ... You turned bright beet red!), and "On the shelf, behind the tuna, next to the peanut butter." We found out that you can sing every Emily Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas." We decided that we had personalities based on classics from American Lit. [Krippy is Hawthorne's Hester Prynne and I am Poe's Spirit or Imp of Perverseness.] We survived six hours of comps thanks to costumed colleaques and pounds of m&ms, the parties in the dorms, my driving adventures (Which way are the Cloisters?), a visit to the Hacienda Parental-types, and our exploits in the backwoods of Purchase in the haunted cemeteries and the desecrated chapel. (Remember the tractor?!) We also spent many a semester torturing our music professors, (Krippy on flute, me on keyboards), harassing Claudio the Cardinal, telling Martinu to F.U., performing "modern" dance routines during ensemble class (thanks for the assist Jane), and then performing with Janey as Trio Non Sacra** during pre-graduation ceremonies- - whereupon we surprised ourselves with our professionalism and our classmates with our theretofore unknown musical abilities.

We survived M'Hell and went on to our various lives of work, graduate school, more work, and ever expanding and extended families. There have been very infrequent trips to Boston, New York, and Maine over the ensuing 10+ years that have brought their own set of highlights for me: including getting lost in the dark and driving down the wrong side of Boston streets late at night, Krippy's cats sleeping on my head when I had the flu on a visit, throwing Krippy's bridal shower in Maine during a three-day MONSOON!, Krippy's wedding and the crazy disappearing Made of Horror/Honor during the first dance, many phone calls about pregnancies and babies, the sobering visit to the Trade Center site a few years after that fateful day, and the more recent quiet hours of just talking in my tiny studio and trying to cram 5 years into a few hours.

As is customary with Krippy and Nettie, the following photograph was taken to mark the occasion. It's tradition.

I know I'm "it", Krip. I'll try and get up to Maine before the twins are old enough to enroll in the alma mater. Miss you already!

* (aka Tati and Amy. Thus we were Krippy and Nettie).
**Yes, that's right. We were called The Unholy Trio. (Insert evil cackling here!)