No One Gets Me Like You Do
November 29, 2024
Writer: MaKenna Atkins
Editor: Stella Cooper
It takes a special kind of person to be able to turn the most excruciatingly embarrassing situations into memories that you can look back on with nothing but laughter and smiles. I was lucky enough to have found that person early in my life and I am even luckier now that I get to call her my best friend.
Rhyan and I have been friends ever since getting partnered up in dance class in the third grade. At that time, we could not have been more different: I would never be caught dead in the front row of a dance number—she, on the other hand, would always volunteer first to try out a dance move. I found it annoying at first, but after a while, I too found myself hoping for the spot in the front row next to my best friend. I often think that if the color yellow was a person, her name would be Rhyan.
As our friendship grew, so too did our collection of memories. We did everything together, including football games, car rides to Target, and even our beloved movie nights where we would binge-watch True Crime documentaries. But the memories that leave both of us on the floor laughing so hard our stomachs hurt aren’t the ones where we made good impressions or said the right things—no, they are the ones where we made complete and utter fools of ourselves.
Even with the distance between us that comes from going to different colleges now, she is still the person that I call when things don’t go as planned: like the time last fall when a bus drove right through a puddle and sent a stream of muddy water straight towards me. Completely drenched from my freshly washed hair down to my now mud-covered shoes, I grabbed my phone from my damp pocket and called Rhyan. We laughed for what seemed like hours and talked about how that kind of thing only happens in the movies, and how we couldn’t believe I still had to go to class after that. She never once made me feel like I needed to be embarrassed about what had happened, and looking back on it, I never once stopped to see if any one of the dozen people standing by had noticed my discolored clothes or smudged makeup—I only wanted to laugh it off with my best friend.
How lucky am I to have found a best friend who I want to share every embarrassing moment with? How lucky am I that I still have so many years left of this crazy, unpredictable life? And how lucky am I that I get to spend the rest of it experiencing those moments that “only happen in the movies” with my best friend? She has made me believe that embarrassment is a mindset that one doesn’t need to be defined by—instead, she taught me to embrace it because these are the moments that last us a lifetime.
Image: Emily Veguilla
