Ode to Ariel

Ariel in cake!  Loving created by our
amazing manager.

This has been a sad weekend in the life of Sauce.  After three wonderful years of friendship, Ariel will be moving back home to Portland tomorrow.  That’s the thing about living in a college town – nothing is ever permanent.  Friends come and go.  They graduate.  They transfer.  They dropout.  And while it’s happened to me before, I’ve never felt as close to anyone as Ariel.

It’s just that from the beginning Ariel seemed to get me in a way that no one really had before.  She understood and shared my slightly girly, totally goofy, marginally awkward and absolutely strange personality.  She got that I loved watching musicals as much as I loved going out.  She just fit my life and I seemed to fit hers.

As we’ve spent the last few days together just hanging out and enjoying her time before moving home, I started to think about how we made the move from coworkers to friends.  Try as I may, the specifics eluded me.  The thing about our friendship is that it’s of the type that you can’t remember ever being without it.  It just feels like it’s always been.  Maybe that’s why I can’t remember.  Or more probably we’ve just had so many fun, random, amazing times that they all blend together.  Either way I don’t really mind.

While I know that distance won’t really matter, I can already feel the change at Hooters.  Weekends were ruled by the Ariel/Sauce duo.  We had random photo shoots and stood on the bar.  We sang show tunes.  We played slug bug with a fervent passion that no else shared.  No matter what we had a good time and it was nearly always infectious.  People came in just to sit at the bar and laugh.  It made me love my job more than I already did.

Now things are different.  Who else knows all the words to “Iowa” from The Music Man?  Who else will wander aimlessly around Target with me spending our just made tips on Starbucks and random shit we don’t need?  Who else will make snow angles with me in -5 degree blizzards?  Who else will speak to me in German?  Who else will run around in ridiculous orange shorts, be totally crazy and not give a damn about what anyone else thinks?

I’ll miss you, Ariel.  To say Hooters will be entirely different without you is a colossal understatement.  Here’s to: virgin Bloody Mary’s, chicken cutlets, hula hoops, soccer balls, Deutsch, Shania Twain, squirrel pounds, coffee runs, yodeling, coloring, D-fine, texting, toast, hangovers, cameras, slashed tires, bus tubs, birthday songs, junior bacon cheeseburgers, nail polish, beach houses, World Cup, Ronnie Dunn, double bras, bad decisions and a million other little things that make absolutely no sense to anyone but us.

Thanks for making my life so totally, absolutely perfect.  Catch you on the flipside.