Ashley Pino.

This Hump Day’s Brunette is brought to you by over ten years of friendship. I still remember the first day I met Ashley Pino (she does, too). Mother dropped me off to the bus stop that was Ashley’s house; she still had her brown van then and declined my invite to stay with me until the bus came (I was starting seventh grade, but obviously still a very shy and nervous girl – and continue to be to this day!). After I crossed the street to stand next to Ashley, she asked if the driver of the van was my mom. I answered, “yes”. We then exchanged names and didn’t talk again (despite sharing a bus stop) until, like, tenth grade.

In those years, I was trying desperately to keep Laura in my life, so making new friends wasn’t exactly an important task to complete. Of course, I made new ones, but I didn’t let them make too much of an impact on me because I just wanted Laura to stick around. Luckily for me, Ashley was still there when the Laura-Jasmine era ended, and we became pretty inseparable the last few years of high school and in the immediate years following; we walked together at graduation, made fun of the same people together, crushed over boys together (not usually the same ones), fell in love with celebrity gossip together, and eventually kind of became the same person.

There were definitely huge fuck-ups on my part that lead to numerous breakups as time went on. Misunderstandings (that shouldn’t have been at all!), name-calling, and just over-all confusion in the world and my part in it caused me to lash out at the ones closest to me. I can’t even begin to express how incredible fortunate I am that she’s always given me another chance. I mean, I ran out of strikes, but she’s continued to let me bat (we like baseball). Our relationship is nowhere near as completely, relaxedly comfortable as it was when we were in high school, but I’ll just chalk it up to the times as well as the tepidness. We’re both experiencing our own forms of “quarter-life crisis”, as well as a scare with the big C (on Ashley’s part) that’s fine now, but always on the mind. We don’t live minutes from one another anymore and we’re not still trying to form an all-girl pop group (WICKED!), but I know she’s always there if I need her and I hope she knows the same from me.

As a test for our pseudo newly-recquinted friendship, we took a trip to Los Angeles last November. It was incredible. I’ll be honest: I was off-the-charts excited about this trip and then grew immediately nervous as I arrived at her house the morning we left. I was scared that maybe she didn’t want to go with me anymore, or that something would just go wrong, you know? We hadn’t even been on a trip together before all of those breakups, so I just didn’t know what to expect. As soon as the Phillies, Johnny Rockets, and celebrity sightings occurred, though, I knew we were going to be okay. Those are our jams!

Collectively, we enjoy the Backstreet Boys, learning Britney Spears dance moves (among many others), chocolate, Spice World, Tracy Morgan (we used to make Saturday Night Live videos – Gemini’s Twin!), and the Philadelphia Phillies and giving the players nicknames that usually involve their celebrity doppelgängers.

Collectively, we do not enjoy … well, most people – including, but not limited to: Pat Burrell (it’s like a hate/we miss him, though-thing), Gwyneth Paltrow (I’m pretty sure?), and, more recently, Justin Bieber. Among many, many more; I’m drawing a total blank. We also dislike most “things”, too. (That people-list doesn’t include the turds we know in real life because that would be too mean, right?)

Ashley is one of the strongest, most forgiving people I know. She’s kind and considerate, despite not receiving the same treatment from others on occasion. She puts every single person on earth before herself, and the second she finally does something she wants to do, everything goes to shit. Universe, I beg you to give the girl a break. I’ll do your laundry for a month, or something, Universe; just please, a break!

(You can also find Ashley on Twitter. I’m just throwing that in there because she’s hilar.)