MySingleFriend

Willa said...

Once, on a tiny coach in a deserted canyon in the desert at night, I turned away from Claire for, oh, 2 minutes. When I turned back, she had made life long friends with the driver. Because of course she had.

I've been with Claire in 20 American states and seven countries, in big cities and tiny villages, in trashy dives and at fancy cocktail bars, and I have never, not once, not EVER, seen her meet someone she couldn't immediately charm into friendship. (It helps that she is game for literally anything whether she's good at it or not. Things I have done with Claire include: popping to another country for lunch, playing volleyball, skinny-dipping, cooking 6 course dinners, going to the theatre, driving 7000 miles, riding roller coasters, building fires, watching crap television, drinking gallons of tea, and, of course, dancing (on sofas, near rural Tennessee highways, mostly naked in the rain))

Maybe it's from being a teacher (and now head of chemistry), but Claire has a rare combo of being both calmly incredibly capable and truly never endingly surprising. She is a is a cheerful, slightly subversive, calm in the storm -- quicker to laugh and slower to lose her cool than anyone I have ever met (I've only seen her genuinely panic ONCE and it was shortly after she was spared a felony charge in Virginia, but I'll let her tell that story). If you can keep up, she'll sort your life out over tea, find the coolest spot to take you to for cocktails and then somehow, without really planning for it, you'll find yourself on some unexpected adventure somewhere you never planned to be, watching her befriend the locals.

You should be so lucky.

(PS if you ARE that lucky gent: when you meet me, please congratulate me immediately for an ENTIRE dating profile for her that doesn't ONCE make a joke about "good chemistry.")