Friends Of Noah
One day in 2018, a year before I met him, Noah was getting off the bus after work. As he walked to his apartment building, he heard someone walking up behind him. It was a man who just happened to live in the same building, and he introduced himself as Owen Blake. I have met Owen Blake a handful of times, but I didn’t know until this last summer that this meeting marked Noah‘s first adult friendship.
From there, Noah’s friend group expanded. As I said, I met him in 2019. In 2021, Noah started hearing about another blind athlete, who we will call Emilia. Emilia and Noah heard about each other’s fame in their respective sport, but each believed that the other did not know who they were. It was not until 2023 that they officially became friends. Over the last year, Noah has also become friends with three other women, Luna, Leah, and Leah's sister Nora.
Noah’s 33rd birthday was on Wednesday, October 1st, 2025. On Saturday, October 4th, at around 4:30, Paige and I drove to a music store, got Noah guitar strings and picks, went back to the apartment to finish getting ready, and then at 6:15 we left to pick up pizza at Adriatico’s on campus. Then we drove to Luna's house. Owen Blake, Leah and Nora, and obviously Luna, were already celebrating with Noah when we arrived at 7:00, but Emilia and her fiancé, Jake, were driving from Pittsburgh.
We spent the first hour eating pizza and getting to know each other. The theme of the party (admittedly more for everyone else as opposed to Noah) was Spider-Man. Luna had gotten a ton of Spider-Man stickers, got a Spider-Man cookie cake, and even had made the invitation Spider-Man themed. That theme is very relevant, but we’ll get back to that in a second.
When Emilia and Jake finally arrived, we all began to talk about how Noah met everybody. After this, Luna informed us, “So before you all got here, Noah sucked some helium and sang a song.”
I replied, half jokingly, “You let him do that before we got here?”
This led to us all taking turns, breathing in helium from balloons. It was something that none of us had done since we were little kids, mostly because it is actually really bad for you if you do it too much, but there were a couple of funny moments. Noah’s was one of the funniest, but it's really hard to describe because, generally speaking, he's just a funny person so pitching his voice up just makes him almost unbearably funny. My voice is already high, so it was really funny when I took my turn because my voice was almost too high-pitched for any of us to hear. But the best had to be Owen Blake's.
As I'm sure you've noticed, I have only referred to Owen Blake by his full name. While it is a pseudonym, I chose a full name because Noah only calls him by his full name, and honestly, it fits because he is a full name kind of guy. He has this very chill, suave vibe about him. As he stood up to fill up his balloon, we all waited with bated breath. He put the balloon to his lips, took a breath in, and then, almost oblivious to the tension that had built in the room, Owen Blake said, in his normal voice, “I don't think I did that right!”
After that, but before we were able to have the cake, Leah and Nora had to go home. Before they were able to say their goodbyes, Luna suggested that Noah give a speech, and I started chanting, “Speech, speech, speech,” and the others followed. I like to think that I am a pretty good public speaker, but Noah's words were so pure that I am not even going to try to quote them; it would not mean the same thing coming from me. I will, however, paraphrase them. Noah said in a way more elegant way that he is the person that he is because of us, and that he couldn't imagine his life without us.
There was a lot more personality and comedy in the way he said it that would not make sense in this installment if I tried to put it in. But in the moment as we all laughed and smiled as Noah professed his appreciation for us, I started to reflect. Other than Owen Blake, I have not met any of Noah's friends before. However, if there's one thing that Noah does chronically, it's talk about his friends. The fact that the theme of the birthday party was a Marvel character was very fitting because, based on Noah's stories, we all already knew each other, and everyone finally being together basically had the same vibe as an Avengers movie. We all got to see each other grow individually (Noah's stories), and we finally got to interact in a big crossover (the party).
It is general human nature to judge the other people in the lives of the people you love. It doesn't matter how good of people they actually are, you are going to make harsh judgments because they are close to someone you care about, especially at first. I think that it is a testament to how great a person Noah is that there wasn't a single second where I doubted any of his friends.
Have A Greattastic Day and Be Safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri
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