Nicole and Me 

An Argument For an Argument

Nikki B.
2-23-05

An Argument for an Argument

Friendship is tested by arguments. There is no better way to see how good of friends you have than to get in an argument. This may seem ridiculous and hypocritical, because a friendship should be a safe haven from a hostile world, but without argument friendships mean very little.
Every relationship people form is tested by arguments of some kind, but with friendship arguments mean more. Everyone argues with their family; it is inevitable. Family ties almost force you to resolve the problem or at least try and be civil. With friendships, people can walk away, pretend that the argument didn’t matter, and replace a friend with a new friend. Family isn’t replaceable.
Somehow most of us manage to go through cycles of friend. We lose touch with some, get angry and avoid others, but the ones that really matter are the ones that we don’t cycle through.
Arguments are truly important even with the friends that remain a constant in our lives. What is a better way to say what you really mean? There isn’t one. Sometimes it just takes seeing red for everything that wouldn’t normally come out to finally be said. After those arguments you know where you stand, feelings are understood, and you finally get the chance to move on.
I moved in next door to my best friend when I was five. We grew up on a dead end road with no other children around. We went to school together in a parochial school with a grand total of 65 students. You could say Nicole and I were inseparable, even if we didn’t want to be. Too much time together means you act more like siblings than like friends, so you can imagine the fights we’ve had.
Our first fist fight ever was over a shoe. Seems a little petty in hind sight, but somehow it mattered in our five year old minds. Nicole got mad at me for something that neither of us remembers and she threw my shoe down the walkway from the barn to the house. I punched her in the stomach and all hell broke loose. Nicole’s mom looked horrified when she came running, due to all of the screaming, and saw us punching, pulling hair, yelling, and clawing. It was only the first of many.
After that fight we hated each other for a whole 15 minutes. By lunch time Nicole was asking if I could come over again. That is always how it worked with us. We would fight, stay mad for an extremely short period of time and move on. The longest we have ever gone staying mad is a week and that was only once. It is our friendship, ironically enough, that allows us to say the awful, horrible things we say to each other and then, without an apology, go back to normal as nothing had ever happened.
Sometimes I forget that I don’t have that kind of relationship with some of my other friends. Fights are different with them. The fights that I have with my other friends are so rare and with some of my friends I forget that I haven’t known them long enough to know if they are going to walk away and not maintain that friendship. Sometimes, even I may not have the willpower to maintain a friendship that is too much work.
I am lucky to have Nicole and I am lucky that we have had the arguments that we have. Without those arguments, our friendship wouldn’t be half as strong as it is now. She knows that, other than my brother, she is the only person in the world that I would give up anything for. We rely on each other more than two people probably should, but I know I can trust her and that no matter what argument we have, she will still be the same with me because we are too connected to lose our bond. I wish everyone could have a Nicole. It makes life and arguments much easier.

Profile of representative from State St. Merchants Association

As a member of the State St. Merchant's Association I am concerned first and foremost with drawing business to the downtown area. I own three local business in the State St. area including Fontana Sports, Soap Opera, and Tutto's Pasta.
As far as my personality goes, I am a hard-nosed business woman that is hard to impress. I am more concerned about getting college students who are equipped with their parent's credit cards into my business, than making a statement with this art.
I would enjoy a little controversy because it will attract people to the area, but due to my crotchety conservative ways, don't push the edge too much. I won't easily agree to anything because I enjoy being a pain in the ass. (I love to exercise any power I have.) You'll leave a better impression with me if things are handled professionally and not like those young liberal hooligans.

Dorm Living

Nikki B.
2-16-05

Dorm Living
Living in a dorm gives new perspective of what is normal. In fact, I think that living in a dorm is probably my most eye opening experience of college so far. It is funny what you can learn about others and even about yourself.
I always thought that I was raised normally. I was wrong. Each of our parents have instilled in us their weird habits that you don’t notice are strange until you live with a lot of other people. You pick up strange terms that may only apply in your household, or in my case, on my dead end road.
I am certainly not the only one who is a little strange. Currently there is a girl brushing her teeth in the bathroom. This is should be a normal action, but in her case, it isn’t. It is 10:30 in the morning and I the morning and I personally have seen her brushing her teeth three times today. She has an electric toothbrush and if her neurotic brushing wasn’t enough, she paces back and forth across the bathroom while she brushes her teeth. Can anyone say OCD?
I can’t say that I have a lot of room to talk. I have found out that I am more like my mother and my mother’s mother than I ever thought. I have picked up on their weird habits. I pronounce thinks as they would, which is with a little polish emphasis that sounds completely ridiculous. Then there are the words that my best friend and I invented over the last 13 years we have spent together. Somewhere in those 13 years I forgot that we invented them and I sometimes don’t realize that people don’t have any idea what I am talking about.
One example of these crazy words is “grunds.” I didn’t realize that we made the word up. We have used it for years. When I said the word grunds to my roommate, she looked at me like I was from another planet. I explained that it must just be a Portage, WI thing, but that didn’t work either. She thought the word was so funny that she asked all of my friends from home that she met. The only people who knew that grunds were in fact underwear, were my two best friends who lived on the same dead end road as me and my father. The funny thing is how logical it seemed to me. A grundy is a wedgie and well, that relates to underwear. My roommate just laughed at me.
My roommate, Katie, has no room to talk though. Her mother was an OCD housekeeper and she didn’t realize that sometimes people use towels more than once. She thought they had to be washed every time. She also didn’t know that clothes didn’t have to be washed if you tried them on and decided to wear something else. If she wore something for 10 minutes it went to the hamper.
I can’t believe how strange I am, but at least I have the relief of knowing that everyone is a little strange in different ways. I guess that finding this out is just one of the joys of living in a dorm.