We'll always have T.G.I. Friday's

This week’s Friendship Friday post is about J.J.

I met J.J. during my junior year of college. I had started a V.C. Andrews online fan group toward the end of sophomore year and she joined around October. I saw that she had an e-mail address from my school, so I contacted her about it. We met up for dinner one evening in November. She seemed kind of shy at the time, but was nice and I enjoyed talking to her. After that, we started meeting up for lunch once a week. We’d make fun of police reports and classified ads in the school newspaper. We also talked about “90210” and “Sweet Valley High” a lot, amongst other things.

The following year, we continued to hang out and became closer. We’d meet up during school breaks, as well. She didn’t live too far from where my family and I were living. Most of the time, we’d have dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s because it was a good in-between spot and we liked the food. We continued to talk about the funny stuff from the newspaper (this time it was one close to where we lived).

We continued to stay close throughout our transition from college to adulthood and beyond. We expanded our dining out locations to include Baker’s Square and Applebee’s. We met up at Randhurst a lot too (a once nice mall that wasn’t doing too well after a while). I introduced her to some of my friends and I also hung out with some of her friends whom I met through college. At one point, there were four of us who would get together in the city and go to Chinatown often. (They were even nice enough to include my husband occasionally.) We’d also meet up at Old Orchard and go to Cheesecake Factory for dinner.

She and I, along with two other friends (different from the ones in the city), joined a bowling league in 2001. We’d bowl and dine on pizza every Sunday night. We got some good inside jokes out of that experience, based on some of the crazy people who bowled against us. We’d all get together outside of bowling just to hang out. We even made team shirts! We also used “Sex and the City” character names as our bowling aliases.

J.J. is obsessed with India. It’s something very unique for someone who feels like her name combination is so common. I’ve never been all that interested in India (even after going to a Hindi wedding), but I enjoyed hearing her talk about Bollywood and shopping with her on Devon Avenue in Chicago. We have a lot of interests in common aside from V.C. Andrews and what we don’t have in common, we still learn about new things from each other. She is also an honorary aunt to my sons. (She’s also an honorary aunt to her friend’s daughters, but that doesn’t take away from my boys, as she still shows that she’s thinking about them.)

When we moved to NJ, she took the news harder than I expected and there was a little tension at first. However, I make sure to see her whenever we’re in town for a visit and we stay in touch via e-mail and Facebook. We still have a lot to talk and laugh about. I hope she’ll come to visit us in Maryland sometime, as that would be a lot of fun. I know the boys would also love to spend some quality time with their “aunt”. No matter how many miles there are between us, we’ll always have T.G.I. Friday’s.