Brian and I met our first weekend at Philadelphia University. We met at one of those safe sex seminars every college freshman has to go to, where he symbolically gave me an STD. (When people ask how we met, we tell them that we met when he gave me an STD. We get some good reactions.) It was one of those exercises that symbolized how quickly STDs spread. I thought he was a nice guy because he was so friendly when we met, which was a rare occurrence for me as a college freshman in a wheelchair. Not many people were so eager to talk to me, probably because they had never really talked to anyone in a wheelchair before. I get it. It can be intimidating. So when we had to mingle and "exchange our STDs", I was nervous. But Brian walked right up to me and was the friendliest person I had met at PhilaU in those first few days. When I was in the moment, I didn't think I'd ever really talk to him again because I didn't know if I would see him. And I definitely didn't think that we would become best friends. But as I've learned in the last year and a half, fate has a funny way of working everything out.
I didn't really see Brian in the following days. But then I started to run into him on campus every now and then. We'd exchange a quick "hello" or "how are you doing?" and continue on. I remember talking with him at an interest meeting for PhilaU Thon, a dance-a-thon fundraiser for the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. But I started running into him more often and usually when I was either having a bad day and needed a hug, or if I just really needed help with something. The first time I can remember this happening was around October freshman year. I had lost my key and ID. Usually, I kept my lanyard around the control panel on my wheelchair, but when I went to grab it to swipe into my building, it wasn't there. It must have fallen off my wheelchair somewhere between Kanbar, our student center, and my dorm. For a normal person, that's about a 15 to 20 minute walk. So needless to say, I had a lot of ground to cover. I started back up the hill to the other side of campus, and who do I see riding down the hill on their bike? Brian, of course. He stopped to say hi, but he could tell something was wrong. I mean, let's be honest, I can't hide my emotions very well. I let him know what happened and he insisted on helping me search for my keys. We searched campus twice and even stopped to ask the people at the front desk in Kanbar if they had any lost keys. No luck. But it was so incredibly nice of Brian to stop what he was doing to help me look. After having been through all of the friend problems I had been through in the prior years, it was unfathomable to me that somebody my age who was so kind actually existed.
Another fateful run in with Brian occurred about two months later. I was heading into Kanbar because my community service class met there. Earlier that morning I had severely burned my finger while trying to straighten my hair. I didn't own any burn cream so I planned on running to Rite Aid later that afternoon. When I got through the doors, I saw that Brian was sitting on the couch so I went over to say hi. I explained to him what happened. Since the health center at my school isn't wheelchair accessible, I hadn't even thought about going there. Brian walked over with me and even went inside to explain to them that I couldn't get in there and that I needed stuff for my burn. They ended up giving me a baggie full of bandaids and some hydrocortisone cream, which last time I checked isn't burn cream. But the bandaids were definitely helpful. Had Brian not been there, I wouldn't have had access to the health center's free bandaids. Fate was definitely at work that day.
Brian and I were running into each other a lot by this point in the year. It was a lot of "right place at the right time" situations. And through all of these run-ins we became close friends. Second semester group of about 5 of us, including Brian, started eating breakfast at the same time. We'd always run into each other and after running into each other for the 3rd or 4th time, we decided to start our own "breakfast club". Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we'd hang out for an hour or so and eat breakfast together. It was the thing I looked forward to most when I would go to bed at night. Our breakfast club truly made me feel like I belonged at PhilaU. Had we not all been getting breakfast at the same time, I don't think we all would have become so close. Shoutout to you, Jenna, Becca, Brian, and Shakarr. You guys rock. <3
Tonight, I definitely experienced fate at it's finest. As we all know, over the last 24 hours or so, the east coast has been getting pounded. I decided that since it was a snow day, it was the perfect time for a dinner party. Jenna, Becca, and Brian, as well as our other two friends Scarlett, and Sarah came over for lasagna. I love throwing dinner parties. It must be the nurturing part of me. I can't mother Camden since I'm at college so I invite my friends over and force feed them large quantities of homemade food. I'm sure they don't mind. A while after everyone went home, I went to meet Sarah and Becca for ice cream at Kanbar. Since it has been snowing, I excepted the sidewalks to be a little slushy. When I got outside, the sidewalk which is normally wide enough for two people to walk side by side, was now so narrow that it wasn't even enough for one person to walk. Since my wheelchair is pretty good at plowing through the snow to get places, I didn't think it would be much of a problem. That is, until I started going down the little hill. I wanted to turn around and just go back to my room but I had hit a point of no return. The width of the path that was hardly shoveled wasn't big enough for my wheelchair to turn around. I decided I'd continue down the path and hope for the best. Where the pathway meets the street is always a problem area that physical plant at PhilaU always neglects. When I tried to get my wheelchair through the pile of snow and slush, my wheelchair stopped moving. It's pretty common for that to happen when I'm driving it through the snow, so I tried to back up. Except, that was a mistake because I only sunk deeper into the snow. So there I was stuck in the snow part way into the road at 10:20 at night. Thankfully it was that late so there weren't many cars around, because the chance of me getting hit by a car was pretty big. When I realized how stuck I was, I called Sarah to see if she could help me dig it out of the snow. When I looked up to see who was walking on the other side of the road, of course it was Brian. I yelled to him that I was stuck and he came over and helped me get onto the sidewalk while he got my wheelchair out. He then had me get in my chair and he helped to push me up the hill to my apartment building. He's so selfless and will go out of his way to help anyone he meets. We both can't believe the perfect timing of tonight. Had I left any later, he already would have walked by.
Brian has become one of my best friends. I feel like fate brought us together for a reason. We're always there for each other when the other one needs anything. We both were accepted to multiple other colleges. What if one of us decided to go somewhere else? What if I decided to stay in my room instead of going to the seminar? What if he hadn't been there tonight? I can't imagine my life without him. I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful friend.
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