YES, I KNOW MY NEIGHBOR. -Jodi Kirkner

This is the moment I've been preparing for since seventh grade!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BOYS AND GIRLS, I PRESENT TO YOU: HYE JEE KIM (without a hyphen)

Lucky, lucky, lucky, I know my neighbor all too well. Hye Jee Kim has been my partner in crime and in LITERALLY everything else since our fateful meeting in the fall of 2011. When I say everything else, I mean it. Our resumes were practically identical up until this year, with the exception of choir (me) vs. orchestra (her). She despises her name being spelled with a hyphen, and has a problem with clusters of circles. She also gets way too stressed over everything, leading me to often laugh at her, with a hearty, "It really isn't that big of a deal."

She's better at math than I, but a little bit less good at science (until this year, because Physics is just a big wad of math wrapped up in a misleading science-y package) and prefers A Very Potter Musical to the actual movies. In Biology freshman year, I left her alone to dissect a fetal pig. I bet she enjoyed that.

Hye Jee is like a squirrel. She kind of dashes around frantically and halfway into the road a car starts coming and she begins to rethink her decision but at this point shes wondering if she should just cross like she originally intended but the car keeps getting closer and there's no time to decide so she springs forward across the street, realizing she left her lunch box on the other side and repeats the whole process a few times until she passes out while watching Netflix.

Speaking of passing out while watching Netflix, I have plenty of thoroughly embarrassing stories about Hye Jee, including finding her in the LFUCG Building bathroom, blow drying her shoes. More on this later.

If I were to characterize Hye Jee as a color I would say she's chartreuse, because when you don't know her she sounds nice and plain and normal but then you actually get to know her and find out she isn't the orangey magenta that she sounds like but actually a strange greenish yellow? A crazy, sarcastically rude person who tears anything you place in front of her into small pieces out of nervous habit? Okay let me tell you about this. HYE JEE TEARS THINGS APART. Not like she's messy (she is, but that's not the problem), I mean she literally tears everything up into very small pieces. Scrap paper, important paper, MY papers, styrofoam cups, tape, straw wrappers, labels for things, folders, binder edges.. anything tear-able that you put in front of her will be in shreds within minutes. Ridiculous. Chartreuse.

Back to those embarrassing stories. I'll shorten them for time's sake. And yours, reader.

1.Hye Jee and I first met over a pencil. She had accidentally dropped it into my fundraising bag in the process of finding her own, we assume. As a school supply nerd, I didn't think about the backstory of the pencil, I just cherished it. It had a little gem thingy on the end. Cool right? Anyway, one day, she saw me using it and said, "Hey, that's my pencil!" to which I replied, "No, I found it in my fundraising bag." The opening lines to our first argument, leading to a friendship built on arguments.

2. Hye Jee watches Netflix before she falls asleep, but every time, without fail, falls asleep with her phone in her hand, an episode of Friends or something playing. Which typically isn't a problem until that hand is dangling over the side of my loft bed, 7 feet above the ground, and I have to save her phone from it. And also until this means she never plugs her phone in and it's constantly dying on her and nobody can EVER contact her.

3. We went on a scavenger hunt and it started pouring rain in the middle. Buckets of soggy fun. But Hye Jee wore leathery shoes and was found blow drying them in the govt. center bathroom afterwards. Priceless.

4. One night I was going to bed after she had already fallen asleep, and I guess made some noise? I was laying myself down when, in her sleep, she sat straight upright, her hand stretched straight out in front of her, and screeched "STOP!" She then proceeded to lay back down and continue sleeping. She also makes weird noises in her sleep, like a baby eating mangoes.

People often wonder if Hye Jee and I like each other or... Not? Because we literally argue over everything for no particularly good reason but it's all in good spirit and we've only been even mildly close to fighting one time and it was all because Lucy WS fell asleep before writing her paragraph for our group essay. So, although we fight more often than siblings, it's all in good spirit.

To sum this post up, I would like to share with you the most important thing Hye Jee has ever been a part of. This is a puppet show we made in 8th grade about Beowulf. We had to make an alternate ending. If you know the story, its worth the watch. If not, IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU SKIP TO THE BLOOPERS AND WATCH THEM YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.

Hye Jee is Wiglaf, and the Dragon. Bloopers start at like 8 minutes.