Text Messages with Friends: The Longtime Friend

In this new series, Text Messages with Friends, I will examine the relationship I have with my friends via text message. The poor soul whose phone I blew up in this demonstration: Andy Dirks.

Who is this mysterious Andy Dirks

I‘ve known Andy since I was a wee lad. We used to sit under an oak tree in elementary school and watch a girl in our class eat acorns during recess. Her name was Tara. She stopped eating acorns in second grade. Look, I’m not judging. It could have been worse. It could have been boogers. Being labeled a “booger eater” in elementary school plays hell on your social standing. Personally, I was a fan of chap stick. That stuff used to taste so good. The cherry kind? So good.

Here’s a picture of Andy. He doesn’t always hold balls in his hand.

Andy had chest hair like a grown man by the time he was six years old. I used to try to get him to shave the Superman logo into it. He wouldn’t budge. Once in 7th grade in Mrs. Clark’s class, I had him bark like a dog for a piece of Teaberry gum as class was going. Andy and I went to summer school together in 9th grade and took Algebra 2. He passed. I failed, again. You know what they say, “third time’s a charm.”

This troublemaker kid at summer school used to call Andy “Paco” because he thought Andy was Mexican. He asked Andy the first day. He said, “Are you Mexican?” Andy said no. It didn’t matter. The kid used to come up to Andy everyday at lunch and say, “Let me hold a dollar, Paco.” I still call Andy “Paco,” and every year for Christmas I wish him a Feliz Navidad. I keep him up-to-date on immigration reform. We discuss episodes of Dora the Explorer whenever I visit home. If we go through a road check, I hide him in my trunk.^[1] It’s a very symbiotic relationship.

Andy was a groomsman in my wedding. He has hairy forearms. We go back.

I sent him this series of text messages below the other day when a few snowflakes fell out of the sky and everyone on Facebook started freaking out. Which is what happens any time the weather is not exactly 72 degrees and sunny.

Seventy-two degrees and sunny doesn’t happen often in Virginia.

Because there is this thing that happens when the earth’s spin axis is tilted with respect to its orbital plane.

It’s called seasons.

This is what I imagine friends and relatives on Facebook are doing when something comes out of the sky that is white.

A text message conversation with an old friendAnd now the moment you have been so anxiously awaiting, my text message conversation with longtime friend Andy Dirks; or, as I know him: George Andrew Dirks.^[2]

Text Messages with Friends. Because nothing says friendship like that asshole you’ve known your entire life who keeps sending you inappropriate picture messages while you are leading an important conference call.