Why the Long Face?

My sophomore year of college in the fall, I was still dating Jimmy. Things were going incredibly sour and just plain awful at this point, but I really felt trapped. Until I met my best friend who I may name a child after for saving me (but maybe not so don't get your hopes up, buddy).

We are going to call him Linus. Hahaha he will hate that. Oh well. I haven't asked him for permission so until I do- Linus it is.

Linus is from Ireland and I swear the only reason we are still friends is because I can't understand half of what he says to me- especially when we first met. Oh my gosh, who knows what I agreed to those first few weeks after we met.

The way we met is probably the best description of our friendship, too.

We were in our first real production class together in college and were placed in the same group for a studio shoot. I had been voted as director of the project (one girl in our class wanted to be director who, while I'm sure she would've gotten the job done, wasn't quite responsible enough to do it, so somebody pointed at me and said, "I vote Sara."). Ever since this project, I knew that somehow I wanted to direct movies. And dang it, I WILL!

Anyways...

During this studio project, people forgot to bring their reels of tape in for the final project, the script never got wrote, and people didn't show up for rehearsal. Awwwesome. I could only do so much without that stuff and I was so nervous. This was a huge grade and the professor told me to understand that most likely, the class would give me a bad grade just because I was the director if they did poorly in the class. Comforting words.

At the end of a rehearsal- where none of this stuff was present!- I sat on the stage. I looked around, and nobody was there. Everybody had gone. I put my head in my hands and just started crying. This was going to be a disaster. Nobody was helping me.

"Hello? I left me bag in here. I'm sorry, I don't know your real name. I've just been calling you Ms.Director Ma'am."

Oh my gosh, Linus had walked in on me in a huge mental break down. And didn't know my name, apparently.

Now Linus was a pretty popular guy at our school. Star soccer player, foreign, and not too bad looking, either. And here I was, resident advisor, student government chair, kind of a geek, sobbing on the stage.

"I'm (hiccup) Sara (hold back sob). This is a disasterrrrr!"

Linus fixed everything. He called his people, found a camera, and the next night, with one of our other studio hands, we filmed the entire reel, wrote a script, and wrote down stage directions.

And that's how our relationship has been since then. Blowing fires out for the other.

Linus was my neighbor senior year. I frequently stayed on his couch during the summer and brought him and his roommate dinner a few times.

This is the guy that saved me from what could have been the dumbest mistake of my life. I have to explain him so people can understand me.

Oh, and Why the Long Face?... that was our production title for the studio project. Fitting, huh? I also got a 10/10 grade from my peers. Not too bad for my first directing, gig.

So thanks for being my best friend, Linus :) Hope this doesn't embarrass you!