Go west of the Prime Meridian and take your first left.

These are my friends. I wish that you knew them.

Drew has the best-fitting jeans of anyone I know and would be the most likely to pull your tail if you were wearing a costume that required such a feature. He mysteriously disappears for weeks at a time, gives really good hugs, and mumbles on the telephone. Recently, he tailored something for me, put 60 pins in my dress, and didn't stick me once. When I tell him he should learn more about werewolves and the Swiss (their cheese and pocket knives), he tells me I should learn more about Hungary. And their hippos.

Travis is known to tell 20-minute stories that start with the words "Quick story for you...," veer off course to include, "...and then, my pediatrician's brother...," and end with "...well, that was longer than I anticipated, but I think you see my point." On any given day, he is the most stable thing in my life, and is the least likely to read and respond to personal email during work hours. If any of this makes you think Travis is stuffy, then you were not at the party in September when he put on a red wig and did ballet jumps in my living room. I am secretly in love with him.

Cathy is the pretty one. I have known her the longest and, when I met her 8 years ago, her hair was red, spiky, and 1-inch long. Now, she looks like this but still wears short dresses and hooker boots to her Quaker church on Easter Sunday. She always knows about some really great new band, and she sometimes gets sick to her stomach when she thinks about how much her Mercedes cost. I have a crush on her dad, Bob, who enjoys green Jell-O with pears in it. Her mom, Nancy, is very understanding about the crush. Cathy once drove to a different state in the middle of the night with $7 in her pocket to stop a boy from getting on an airplane, which is cooler than anything I have ever done.

Matt is very witty and mostly kind, but cusses at you if you say that you don't like waffles. He sometimes explains things in grand metaphors that start out normal but end with him saying things like "collective inertia" to explain something pretty simple. I trust him enough to loan him books and musical instruments and my best friend Brad, and he returns almost all of them to me un-broken. He reads to children and visits his parents often and has curly hair. He doesn't eat anything east of the Prime Meridian and, if asked to select a song for a compilation CD, will always choose 'Gimme Dat Nut' by Eazy E.