Jami Leigh Nord is very close to me. She’s not close
distance-wise, with her in Texas and me in Virginia, but we are close personality-wise.
We’re like two peas in a pod, despite an age difference of five and a half
years. Jami and I are so alike that we could be sisters.
We have never seen each other face-to-face. We met through
a virtual pet website called Creature World. It was just by chance, nothing
more than timing. I was a scared newbie, Jami was an older member, and from
the time when the first messages were sent and received on, I followed her
around on that site like a frightened child behind her mother. Jami and
I have both since abandoned Creature World, but though the friendship flashed
in and out at first, we have remained friends through another game called
Neopets and through instant messengers.
It was near two years ago when we first met. For the
better part of the first year or so we were not close friends, staying in
contact only through her Neopets guild, which I had joined. It was last
year when she got AOL instant messenger and we started talking. It was like
AIM was the magic pathway. It opened a door of communication and as soon
as we could cross through it, we did. With a good, solid, fast source of
communication, we became close friends.
Jami always seemed to be around during the school year.
She was a college student, and the broadband Internet connection she had
there enabled her to leave her messenger up all the time. While she was
at class, meals, and special activities and while she was sleeping her auto-response
was up. Other than those times she was always behind her computer screen.
I suspect she’s guilty of multitasking while doing homework, keeping one
eye on the screen and the other eye on her work.
She was always there. When I had a problem, when I needed
to vent, when I just wanted to talk, Jami was one of the few people I knew
I could always go to. I could trust her to listen, to give advice if needed
and if she could, and most importantly, to understand. With two people so
alike, how could one not understand the other?
All friends have some simple similarities that keep
them together, for if two people have nothing in common, how can they be
friends? Just like with anyone else, there are some simple similarities
between Jami and me. We both have brown hair, though hers is lighter and
curlier than mine is. We have read books by some of the same authors. We
spend time on some of the same Internet sites and computer games. We both
like writing and greatly dislike math. The list is endless.
Jami judges people on mental age rather than physical
age. She has said that part of why I’m her friend is because I’m more mature
than a lot of twenty-year-olds she knows, but the same could go for her.
A part of that could be the fact that we are both gifted. By definition,
one trait that goes along with being gifted is being concerned with things
that usually don’t matter until an older age. Gifted people are also quick
learners, very creative, and concerned about fairness and what’s right and
what’s wrong. Jami shows all of these traits in almost everything I’ve seen
her do and in the stories she tells. She has often talked of school and how
easily she went through it, even in her senior year. Her creativity shows
in her guild, one of the only two I have stayed in. Her contests and layouts
make it very impressive. Fairness shows on the Neopets message boards—she
has committed herself to helping the Neopets staff rid the site of scammers.
There is a funny little coincidence concerning Jami,
myself, and giftedness. Though others knew, I was not aware that I was gifted
until just a few months ago, towards the end of eighth grade. Jami wasn’t
found to be gifted at all until middle school. She didn’t find it at all
surprising, and now she laughs at it.
Jami laughs about a lot of things, actually. Quite
a few of our conversations are light-hearted. I think that’s part of why
talking to her almost always makes me feel better. She knows when to laugh
and when not to, when to try to make me laugh and when not to. I think she’s
one of the people who make me laugh the most. She just has that air around
her, when she’s in the right mood. How a person can remain in a bad mood
around her when she’s like that is beyond me.
Things are not always nice for Jami, though. As with
everyone, she gets into bad moods, and when she does, watch out—she has
a colorful vocabulary and control of the power to use it. Things push her
buttons. What connects the two of us in this is the fact that we have some
of the same pet peeves. For example, this past May. For years one of my pet
peeves has been when people say, “I’m sorry!” when they weren’t even anywhere
near the situation. I mentioned it to several people, but never to Jami.
One night in late May, Jami instant messaged me. Her exact words are lost,
but she said something around, “I hate when people say that they’re sorry
when they didn’t do anything. It’s not their fault.” Jami’s words and feelings
echoed my pet peeve without her even knowing.
Along with pet peeves, Jami and I share some cares.
As do I, Jami cares a lot about helping others. She hangs around the Help
Chat board in Neopets, giving advice and assistance to newbies and others
who need help with the site, HTML, and whatever else people ask about. (Note
that I’ve never been to that board…)
The deepest connection between two people is probably
in their thoughts. No two people are exactly the same, and no people think
exactly the same way. Jami and I are pretty close, though. We tend to react
to actions similarly, as shown before. We also tend to react to things that
happen similarly.
I am applying to the Program for the Exceptionally Gifted,
which is a college program for high school-aged females. When I first started
writing my application essays, I got scared. I questioned whether I was good
enough to attend PEG and succeed if I got in, and I even considered dropping
the idea of applying. I told Jami the questions I was asking of myself and
my doubts. She was able to pinpoint the source. She was able to put into words
why I was scared, why I doubted myself, why everything looked as it did.
She didn’t look to me at all when she was explaining this. She asked me no
questions. Jami simply expressed how she felt when she first went to college.
Though we are two different people, we had almost exactly the same feelings
and thoughts concerning going to college.
It is not often that people find other people with whom
they can completely connect. I have, a very special person. I can connect
with Jami Leigh Nord in a way that is almost scary.
