Hysterical Friend

or, "How an Absurd Late-Night Text Exchange with a Sexist Idiot managed to Ctrl + C the Infinite Loop of my Grieving Process."

(This one's not about stats.)


On Sunday, March 24th, my friend DaVore died suddenly. She was only 29, and seemed perfectly healthy, but a seizure struck and that was it. No warning, no reason, just no more DaVore. It's been a rough few days.

I know that the Kübler-Ross stages of grief aren't supposed to happen in any order, and that it's common for a grieving person to repeat stages. It still doesn't feel great to have been bouncing around like a pinball between somber contemplation, uncontrollable sobbing, and profane outbursts for the last four days. Sure has made tutoring students fun.

I've visited and revisited denial (what do you mean, DaVore is dead? I saw her last week, and she was definitely alive. She wanted me to find her some practice geometry proofs and check her work, and her being dead would screw up that plan, so she can't be dead), anger (God, I wish I believed in you so that I could tell you what a fucking asshole you are-- she wasn't even thirty, and she had plans and a boyfriend and a dog and she was about to get Director of the Month, what the hell were you thinking?), bargaining (there is no why, it's just a freak accident. Seizures can happen to anyone. Why couldn't it have happened to me instead? That would have been better than losing DaVore), and depression-- well, depression has been the constant, uniting theme of the week. It's just that last one that I haven't hit yet: acceptance.

It feels bizzare for me to talk about DaVore in the past tense. I felt sick to my stomach when I went to Mathnasium and saw the walls covered in heartfelt artwork from her students. While the other tutors were sharing their favorite DaVore memories, I felt like screaming at them. DaVore is supposed to be an actor in the world, not a prop, or a collection of stories. I don't want to cherish my memories of her, because my favorite thing about DaVore was her unpredictability. It's not fair that our static memories are what's going to define DaVore now. It should be DaVore who defines DaVore, not me-- I know I'll remember her wrong, and she won't be around to correct my mistakes.

During what shouldn't have been, but turned out to be, our last conversation, I told DaVore about a cute waiter I met at the noodle shop earlier that day. I had been working out a proof while eating, and he peered over my shoulder to ask what I was doing. That's not uncommon-- I do math in restaurants a lot, and I've had plenty of waiters and baristas take a casual interest. What was uncommon was that this guy didn't react by putting up his hands and saying "Oh, I haven't done math since high school, you must be smart!" Instead, he suggested that I try forming similar triangles and setting up a proportion. I said I'd tried that, but see, you always end up reducing to something trivial, like x = x. And he said Oh man, I see what you mean-- could you solve it with an integral? And I said yes, of course I could, but this is a problem from an eighth grade textbook so I know there has to be a solution using basic algebra and geometry. And he said I hope you figure it out before you leave, because I'll be thinking about it all night! And so when I did leave, I left him my notes and my email address.

DaVore loved it. She warned me that if things go south, I can never go back to that noodle shop again-- she had dated a Cheesecake Factory waiter, and now she can never go back to the Cheesecake Factory, and how attached was I to this noodle shop?-- but she encouraged me to pursue the guy. She made me promise to tell her how it all worked out. Of course, I can't now, so I'll tell you, instead.

How it worked out was that the next week, I went back to that noodle shop, summoned my courage, and gave the waiter my number. I told him that life is really short. He smiled and said he'd shoot me a text sometime. Later that evening, the following text communication ensued. (All photos included are the photos I sent, and they're all from pictures I had already taken on my phone. The spelling and punctuation of all messages, his and mine, are unchanged from the original.)


(phone number): heyy wats up
be faithful

Me: Is this noodles and integrals guy? I don't think I actually know your name

(phone number): dis hysterical friend he didnt wanna talk to u so he said i good talk to u so wats uo
be faithful

Me: Sounds like autocorrect is just having a field day with you right now. I've saved your number as "hysterical friend."

Hysterical Friend: so u save my number
be faithful

Me: My phone automatically stores the number of anyone who contacts me; I just gave you a name. So noodles guy didn't want to talk to me? Sad. I guess he was out of my league anyway.

Hysterical Friend: okay send me a pic
be faithful

Me:


You didn't say a pic of what

Hysterical Friend: your a dide
be faithful

Hysterical Friend: u not gone txt Baker
be faithful

Me: I can't figure out if you're calling me a dude or a dick. Either way it's funny.

Hysterical Friend: are u a Guy is wat im asking
be faithful

Me:


Check out my hot pussy

Hysterical Friend: really uma stop dexting den u playin

be faithful

Me: If we're playin', I think I'm winning ;)

Me:

Maybe you prefer cocks?

Hysterical Friend: iight u is u don't wanna be real
be faithful

Me: Don't know what you're talking about- I'm real like (square root negative one) squared, baby. Ain't nothing imaginary about me.

Me:

But sometimes I can be irrational

Hysterical Friend: okay den send a real pic den
be faithful

Me:

How you like my pearly whites?

Hysterical Friend: i see wats up wit all the pics
be faithful

Me: You really want a naked pic? Do you not know how the internet works, or what?

Hysterical Friend: wat u mean i wanna see a pic of u person wiss
be faithful

Hysterical Friend: really u gone act like dat keep sending desert crazy pics
be faithful



And here the story ends, because by that point, it was about 2 a.m. and I had already laughed myself to sleep. And when I woke up, the pain was still there, but it wasn't the same as it had been the last few days. I think I know why.

One thing that was remarkable about DaVore was how well she rolled with the punches. When her students were at their rowdiest, her voice was as calm as could be. Her response to any disaster-- one of our students brought a kitten to class in his backpack, another student might be getting held back this year because of her math grades, another student has an Algebra II final tomorrow and doesn't know how to use the distributive property-- was the same: "We'll work with it." She dealt with life's chaos by first accepting it for what it was, then working toward a solution.

I tend to have a different approach to life. I get caught up on the way things ought to be, instead of accepting problems and working around them. Normally, I would have become huffy and indignant at this asshole. Probably would have given him a text-lecture (texture?) about how a woman's contact information is not something to be traded like property, and that simply posessing my phone number doesn't entitle him to the same kind of interaction that I would pursue with someone to whom I had voluntarily given my phone number. Woulda gone all feminist on his ass.

Clearly, that's not what I did. The guy is a sexist idiot-- I knew that as soon as I read his "he didn't want to talk to u but he said i good talk to u" message-- but what can you do? I wasn't going to change his mind, and I'd just make myself feel frustrated and shitty. Might as well mess with it and see what happens. And it turned out to be funny as balls. I really hope DaVore would have laughed when I told her about it.

Now, it's kinda silly, and pretty trivial, and definitely unrealistic to think that DaVore is somehow using texts from an illiterate teenage misogynist to contact me from beyond the grave. But in a weird way, this exchange feels like DaVore is trying to tell me, "Yeah, I'm gone, and it sucks. There are sexists in the world, and they suck too. But it's the way things are, and things will be a lot better for you if you stop fighting it and start working with it."

There's no doubt in my mind that a world without DaVore is inferior to a world with DaVore, but it's the world I live in now. I have to work with it. It's never going to stop sucking that DaVore is dead, but I'm alive, and I have some sexist teenagers to go troll. I hope that's what she would have wanted.

Rest in peace, Miss D.