I was thinking about it as I was browsing through Facebook photos, and it dawned on me… I cannot even begin to describe how happy this photo makes me. I mean, not just because it’s hilarious, but because of how strange it is for me to see these two people in the same photo. These two girls have easily had the biggest impacts on my life, out of any on the planet. No two girls know me better than these two do. I’ve known the one on the left since I was 18, and through sitting in Quick Chek parking lots for hours, making ridiculous mix tapes, putting on puppet shows, jotting down our endless reservoir of inside jokes and taking road trips to suburban Pennsylvania towns, she’s been my best friend ever since. I’ve known the one on the right since I was 14. At a young, impressionable age, she stepped into my life and let me know that I wasn’t the strange little kid I thought I was. Or, to phrase it better, that it was ok to be who I was. She was the first girl I’ve ever truly related to, the first one that really listened to what I had to say, the only one that stayed up to talk with me on AIM until 5:00 AM, and talk about how much we loved Death Cab For Cutie and Op-Ivy and A Bronx Tale, and talk about all of life’s strange imperfections that only we could see. And now, after 10 years of her being one of my closest friends, she’s my awesome girlfriend. But until November 2010 (when this photo was taken), these two unbelievably important people had never appeared in the same photo together, and had only met briefly before this. And yet, there they are, doing what they’ve always done ever since I’ve known each of them: Make me smile by being the wonderful people they are.