11.
Taylor and I met in seventh grade. And now that we’re friends and I think she’s completely lovely, I’ll be honest: seventh grade me did not like seventh grade Taylor that much. To be fair, I did not actually know Taylor. We’d met only a couple of times because we had no classes together. We didn’t participate in the same extracurriculars. We weren’t in the same homeroom. I’m not even sure we were in the same “team” (middle school was divided into teams). So, I didn’t actually know Taylor until eighth grade when we were in the same team and math class.
It wasn’t even that seventh grade me didn’t like seventh grade Taylor, to be honest. It was… well. You see, seventh grade me had the boyfriend that all of the other seventh grade girls wanted. I’m not even exaggerating. Taylor and a handful of our mutual friends liked him, too. And the thing that bugged me wasn’t that all these other way prettier girls liked him—and trust me they were all way prettier. (I mean, I think I’m pretty pretty now, but seventh grade me would wear blue eyeshadow on one eye and purple on the other and still looked kind of like a boy.) But what irked me was that he would hang out with them but never wanted to hang out with me. Anyway, that was a long time ago. He’s gay now. Or I guess he was then, too…
But this post is about Taylor! Not my gay-seventh-grade-boyfriend. Psha.
So, my first impression of Taylor wasn’t great. She was skinny and pretty and my boyfriend liked hanging out with her which meant she was basically the exact opposite of me.
My current impression of Taylor started developing in tenth grade. We had art together and talked a lot. She was one of the first people I had ever seen wear colored jeans. She was pretty and cool and constantly laughing. I like people who constantly laugh because I constantly make jokes and I can pretend that the two are related. She was also crazy talented.
The summer after our sophomore year, we went with a group from school to a whole host of European countries. We were almost always placed in the same room, and we almost always hung out. I appreciated that because by this time we were solid friends whereas my opinions on nearly everyone else we were there with were pretty unfavorable. Our group of about five(?) spent nearly the entire time talking and laughing. I remember early on, Taylor said something about liking chubby dudes. (I doubt she’d mind me telling you that?) And I remember thinking that Taylor was so pretty and cool and if she liked chubby dudes, maybe there were pretty and cool guys out there who liked chubby girls. (Trust me: that concept can be pretty revolutionary to a chubby sixteen year old.)
I also remember one night, in Paris, our third roommate was flipping through channels while Taylor was showering and I was journaling. Then, Taylor came out of the shower and our third roommate headed to the shower, and someone started angry-banging on our door. So, since Taylor and the third roommate were not properly dressed, they both hid in the bathroom, and I had to get yelled at by our tour guide for “noise complaints” all by myself. And I was just sitting there, at the foot of my bed, near the doorway, holding my journal and wearing my pajamas, apologizing until he left. And then the two of them walked out of the bathroom and were like, “WHAT THE HELL? WE WEREN’T BEING NOISY. THAT ASS.” So, he probably just made us noisier.
Also, we all ate Kinder Bueno basically constantly while we were there. Then she got me a package of Kinder Buenos for this last Christmas. It was really sweet of her.
Anyway, this post is getting pretty long. So here are some things about Taylor now:
She knows more about makeup than pretty much anyone else I know.
She’s super pretty. That’s why I always reblog her selfies.
She’s really smart and very hardworking.
She already has a boyfriend, so, congrats to him and sorry to everyone else in the world.
Dr. Pepper is officially too sweet for her, so now she likes diet coke better.
She’s basically a fairy.
She’s still super cool, super pretty, and super talented.
We maybe could have been really good friends for a really long time if my gay seventh grade boyfriend just let me hang out with him and his friends but whatever shit happens. It’s fine. We’re friends now. I’m just a little disappointed that we weren’t also friends in middle school.
