Have you ever had a friend who you just regretted telling anything private? Like a disease, you open your mouth when you are around this person and then instantly regret it. Because you know that you will hear about that one thing again and again and again for years evermore? You must know that friend. I have that friend. I don't see this friend for months and within five minutes of being reunited this friend brings up that uncomfortable thing. It's almost predictable.

I worry that I am that friend for someone else. Like we all have these roles that we must either endure or play for each other. The way the theory works, we either are on a constantly moving track of roles that change according to the friend or we are just set up to play that same role over and over again with every new friend. I wonder which would be worse? The problem with this whole problem is that you never really know that you are that friend.

It's not like I am going to start asking that friend to stop reminding me of all the times I've had poor judgement in confiding to her. Oh- I could see that going over well: "please stop asking me about my anxiety. and my intermittant baby fever. and my screwed up family. thank you." She would be completely shocked. She wouldn't know what else to talk about. All we've ever talked about (much to my discomfort) for the past few years has been this.

What role do I play in other people's lives? Am I the boring, lecturing lola who is good for asking really boring medical questions? Perhaps the insecure lola who will always make you feel just a little more popular, knowing there is at least one person in this universe more socially awkward than you.

Speaking of which, I visited with my cooler that anything friend in manhatten the other day. (shout out!) She introduced me to all her friends and I was a total dork. I actually couldn't speak in complete sentences I was so excited to be meeting new people. AND they were native, no less. It was like I was a brown cinderella and I just couldn't keep my shoes on to save my life. All tripping and falling into pumpkin chariots and all that. I could have squashed a few mice and not even have known it. No wonder I had to race to catch my train. Well, I had been up since four that morning, you know. ahem.