Throwing Up and Making Friends

The first time I met my friend Noah we were in a van and I almost threw up on him. We were on the way to Rosh Hashana services with a bunch of kids from our school’s Hillel, most of whom I had only met a couple minutes before.  I was a freshman, and I didn’t know anybody. I was nervous and scared, and something about the weird elevation in Ohio was messing with my stomach and all I knew was that all these people felt kind of vaguely bad for me but didn’t know what to do, and that I needed a bag or something a.s.a.p.

Noah had the dubious pleasure of being stuck next to me for the 40 minute van ride up to Kent State, so we could join their Hillel for services. I was feeling sick pretty much from the get go, and it only got worse as we continued to drive. Noah, being a teenage boy, was fairly panicked about the whole ordeal.

Eventually it got bad enough that we pulled the van over next to some cornfield (because Ohio always has a scenic cornfield, for all your barfing needs!) so I could do what I needed to do. And I did. And I was super embarrassed.

I was convinced that this was the end of any hope I had at making friends at Hiram. From then on, I would be the weird girl who threw up in a corn field and couldn’t even handle taking a 40 minute van ride. I was done, and no one would talk to me, and I wouldn’t have anyone to hang out with, and people would make fun of me, and everyone would spread the story and… my brain spiraled and panicked and I freaked out.

Except that’s not what happened at all. What happened is the awkward panicked boy, who I had felt bad for since he was trapped next to me, was kind about the whole horrible situation. He talked to me and calmed me down, and made the whole thing suck a little bit less.

I wouldn’t have guessed that the way I would make friends at Hiram would be by almost throwing up on them, but I suppose you don’t really get to pick how people come in to your life. That weird, tentative friendship in the back of the van led (directly or indirectly) to basically everything good that happened to me at Hiram. It’s how I met all the theatre kids, and the way I started hanging out with most of the people from Hiram that I still call my friends.

I’m still working on making friends at Salisbury, but maybe I need to think about it a little bit less and live it a little bit more. I think it’s pretty clear by now that I am firmly in camp Socrates, and feel the need to examine everything about my life. I’m trying to do that a little less and participate in it a little bit more.

Because sometimes just being sick in a van is how you make friends. Not through complicated or conventional means, but through happy (in retrospect) accidents. I’m not advocating throwing up on strangers in hopes of making friends, but I am reminding myself that sometimes the weird things that happen that freak you out might end up being good in the long run.

But seriously. Don’t throw up on strangers.