Season 5 Who Am I? Blog 8: The Spencer Rule

 The Spencer Rule

A few weeks ago, I went to Cincinnati to visit Marshall and Aspen. We had a lot of fun, but that is not the point of this installment. When we first met Marshall, he was living with his two childhood best friends, Ricky and Kevin. These two are Marshall’s “brothers'' in the same way that the Andersons are my “sisters.” The difference is Ricky, Marshall, and Kevin have grown apart. Despite this, they still keep in contact. In fact, Ricky and Marshall hiked the Smoky Mountains, right before the 2020 quarantine, and they worked at the same place in Colorado, removing contaminants from N95 respirators (Marshall vs Covid-19).

While Marshall is relatively new to the group, he is very aware of the crazy things that my “sisters” and I did before he arrived. When I was in Cincinnati, Marshall and I got into a deep conversation as we often do. We were talking about past friendships and why you should maintain them. To prove his point, Marshall brought up one of my “sister’s” exes, whose name also happens to be Ricky.

“Think about it Mitchell,” he said, “while they broke up in high school and you have all moved on, ex-Ricky is still seen as the jerk that he was then cuz that’s how you knew him. You should let people from your past know who you are now.”

This led me to think about our former friend, Spencer. I met Spencer in the Spring of 2014 and he, my “sisters” and I hung out sporadically from then until the spring of 2018. At that point, we had a falling out and I hadn’t talked to him in four years. As a result of my conversation with Marshall, when I returned to Columbus, I reached out to Spencer.

We decided to get coffee and go to a park that we had been to a couple of times in our teen years. We hung out for about three hours and caught up on each other's lives. I even went into his house, which in the time that I've known him I have never done before.

My goal for this season is to get a better understanding of who I am, or at the very least, figure out who I want to be. The reason I reached out to Spencer after my conversation with Marshall was I realized I'm done with letting friendships go because of drama that happened in the past. After hanging out with Spencer I devised The Spencer Rule. It states: No matter how a friendship ends (with some exceptions) it can always be recovered.

Have a Greattastic day and be safe

J. Mitchie Ulibarri