An Almost Perfect Day

I don't know whether I've ever mentioned it on this blog or any other, but I have had one nearly perfect day in my life, my twentieth birthday. On that day, all the stars seemed to align, and one big thing that I had been longing for finally came to pass, amid several other surprising smaller ones. (And no, it's probably not quite what you're thinking.) I won't go into too many details, so as not to detract from the holiness and splendor of that day, but to give one small example, an extremely beautiful Puerto Rican guy who I had barely ever spoken to spontaneously decided to organize a birthday dinner for me, and came up with this idea in front of the guy I had a huge crush on at the time, picking me up and twirling me around and asking the guy, "Isn't she fabulous? Don't you just love her?" That's the kind of day it was. I mean, on what planet does that normally happen?

And the Puerto Rican guy was actually the least instrumental of the agents of fate operating on that day. The other two were my friend Arjun--who was the height of cool, like an Indian Steve McQueen, and managed to lend me his aura for the day--and Vicky, the friend I lost in Boston a few years later. Most of the rest of our group of friends were off on study abroad programs that year, throwing Vicky and me together more than ever before. She was my confidante, my pep-talker, my strategist, and ultimately the person responsible for orchestrating the happiest day of my life. And she was the person I ran to the next morning with my story, the one who would understand it all.