on armeen

Dang it, I've become a non-blogger in the last 5 days. Nevertheless, this will make up for it.

My senior year in high school, to avoid a half-semester of gym - a treacherous combination of changing in a locker room while trying to avoid public display of any embarrassing parts, sweating profusely in the hot Houston sun, and being unequivocally bad at any sport we attempted to learn - I volunteered to be the "towel girl." This essentially involved sitting in the locker room for an entire period, folding old laundered gym clothes, and handing towels to sweaty people from whatever cruel torture Coach Farrell decided to put them through that day.

Sound boring?

It very well might have been, except for the glory of fellow towel-girl and gym-class avoider Armeen Hussain, a FOBby (fresh off the boat) brown girl who was sassy, smelled funny and didn't give a crap of what other people thought of her, including myself. My daily dose of her, in between cutthroat honors classes, was refreshing. To Armeen, I wasn't "that smart girl" or "the valedictorian" or "that girl with the blue jacket" - I was just "the towel girl." And that made me happy. (Low expectations, I guess...)

I remembered her today because I was looking through old papers, and found this goodbye note from Armeen on our last day of service:

"Hey Priti, I'm so glad that u r ad with me. And I have really nice friend and really smart. and stupid. I spend a really nice time with you. I will miss you when I am folding clothes, all those stupid shirt. One more thing, good luck for y...our future. I will really miss you. Bye. Armeen Hussain (stupid)."

I laughed so hard, I wanted to cry.