This is my best friend Erin (the girl in the foreground; the fellow in the background, while part of a good many stories himself, does not feature in this account). She is, in a word, ridiculous, and I'm quite fortunate to have found another person in this world who is as strange as I am... actually, probably more so. Moreover, our moods and life phases tend to bear an eerie resemblance. While that, again, plays no part in this tale, it does go a long way to explaining why we're so darned close.
Erin and I met through NCSC. We were both members of the host team for the D.C. conference in 2004. Erin was on the exec board in 2005 as the northeast regional chair, and again in 2006 when I joined her (simply unable to be parted from her as I was, I doubled my annual face time with the girl from just regional meetings to both regional and national meetings).
In March of 2006, she and I, along with three other members of our board, went to NCSC's Spring Break UN Study Session in New York City (yes, the same thing I went to this March). During the day, we attended seminars and listened to some of the most edifying speakers I've had the privilege of hearing. In the evening... well, we were ridiculous. You set a troop of friends who see each other four times a year loose in New York, you're going to get some crazy.
Which is where our story starts.
Erin, Josh, an assortment of other wonderful people, and I are walking down some long avenue in Manhattan. An unsuspecting suit approaches us, minding his own business. Erin spots this gentleman from about a block away, and immediately her impulsive and magnificent brain sets to work.
"Josh, look at this guy. He looks like you in ten years," she says. Josh replies with some standard chuckle and a yeah right. "No, really look at him. He's like your old twin." Yeah, ok Erin, sure. "Can we get a picture of you two together? Please?" Definitely, Erin, sure (this obviously meaning definitely not, Erin, no way).
When we and the Old Josh Doppelganger finally met like trains on parallel tracks, my beloved Erin actually breaks rank, stops this guy, and tells him he looks like our friend Josh in ten years and can we take their picture together?
Cue the rest of us looking shocked, bewildered, and very impressed. The Doppelganger graciously, if warily, agrees to pose for what will be one of the top ten pictures in history.
The results were not only the above picture, a good hard laugh, and an incredibly awesome story, but also the wonderful picture below, wherein Josh tells Erin, "I can't believe you did that. I'm going to kill you. I swear." Look at it. You don't even have to know the guy to see that he's beside himself with shock and humiliation.
To this day, a solid fourteen months after the fact, I still look at these pictures, laugh out loud, and want to call Erin.
In fact, I'm going to.
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