A Story About Friendship
Luckily, another coworker noticed that I was struggling with reorganizing the salads and helped me out. Despite the alleviation of that stress, however, the sadness that I felt about Lily was still very present by the time I got off work. As soon as I got into my house, I got a text from an old friend...
I first mentioned Max back in Season 1. I met him at Haugland Learning Center, a school for kids on the autism spectrum that we attended, and where I am employed in less “Covidy” times! He was in one of my classes, and we hit it off right away! Max is at the very beginning of most of my stories about where I am today. He is part of the reason my "sisters" and I became friends after years of fighting, and he also set me on the path to working at Haugland.
Because we are both autistic, it was effortless for us to connect as it is for most people I meet on the Spectrum. But the thing that brought us together was his nickname for me. One day Max was having a meltdown, and I intervened. He gave me the nickname Dr. Mitch, and I continued to help him help throughout our time as students at Haugland.
Every year Haugland has a talent show. In my first year at the school, Max sang “We Are The Champions”, and everybody loved it. The second-year, he did "Ghostbusters," and while It was still excellent, it wasn't as bombastic as before. So for the third year, he and I teamed up and did a stand-up act. We practiced for hours and hours on these jokes, and while now I have to admit that they weren't as funny as I thought they were, we still had fun doing it!
When I left Haugland, Max and I grew apart. We didn't reconnect until February of 2019, at his birthday party. While I promised myself that I would stay in contact with him, between that February meeting and the beginning of the lockdown, I only saw him twice.
Weeks before the ball dropped, marking the start of 2020, I knew what my New Year's resolution was: by December, I would have a new friend group. At that time, August was preparing to do an internship in Utah, Arden had just recently moved to Colorado indefinitely, and Aspen was going to school in Miami, Florida. The only person from my childhood friend group left was Kid, who was just about to turn 16. I love Kid to death, but it was very obvious to me that I couldn't just have her as a friend.
I had a good start at building my "Empire of Friends." I had Marshall to begin with, and my now bandmate Noah, and a girl I went to grade school with named Anna. I planned to build my relationship with those three and through them meet new people and make new friends. But then Covid came and ruined those plans.
As I looked at Max's text, I thought about all the people I haven't seen since March. I realized at that moment that I was wrong about building a new friend group- I didn't need to. This "Empire of Friends" I've been searching for has been right in front of me the whole time!
Have a Greattastic Day and Be Safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri.
Rules For A Greattastic Life will return for Christmas!
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