Life in the Corn Minion Number Six: Ungfishlay.

Name: Lizabetheay Iapay-Illermay.
Location: Ithaca, New York.
Occupation: When not holding down a 40 hour work-week position at a Latin American bookstore, she "finds the time" to be a mother to two foster children.
Strangest Thing Ever Said To Me By Any Human, Ever: "Or, she could just turn into a lungfish and hobble away."
Irrationally Fears: Being savaged by a skunk.
Doesn't Remember: Our sophomore year of high school. Like, at all.

I met Ungflishlay at a very vulnerable time for me. I'd just moved to the woods, and nobody wanted to be friends with that weird Mid-Atlantic State kid; well, save a few socially inept, Magic-playing-in-the-"caf" mutants. I had big hair. I talked funny. And, to say I couldn't dress myself properly would be a gross understatement, like as if I were to say that Charro was sent to Earth from the bowels of Hell itself. To make matters worse, I was in an Honors English class that I should not have been in, filled as it was with Bangor's power-elite's spawn, each secure in the knowledge that they'd be getting trust funds and villas on the Maine coast upon graduation. The teacher, Mrs. Kornfield (hahahahaha! irony!) pitied me as one might pity those children you seen on Sally Struthers TV ads for relief work in Calcutta; you feel bad because you know that when the director says "cut", that kid's gonna end up bathed in acid in her belly. Well, good ol' BHS was my Sally Struthers, and I wasn't about to let that bitch chew me up without a fight. One day, Mrs. Kornfield was talking to a young woman when I walked into class, and, upon seeing me, Mrs. Kornfield's eyes twinkled unnaturally.

"Domonic! So good to seeeeeeee you!", she positively hissed. "Have you ever met Lizabetheay? She's in my mod 13-14 Honors English. She's going to be putting on a skit as her project!"

Incidentally, I HAD met her. We were in the same Corporeal and Psychological Torture Class, aka Phys. Ed. We'd never talked, but I remembered her well: the first time I laid eyes on her, she was wearing a shirt that said "I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay."
We greeted each other, and then Elizabeth went her merry way, she of the Converse sneakers. A few nights later, I got a call. I don't remember if I actually gave her my number (prolly) or if she looked me up in the book, but there she was, on the phone. "I have a book report due tomorrow," she said. "Have you read 'The Color Purple'?"

I had, and we began to talk. No, not about the damn book. About olives. About our weird-as-a-bag-of-hair families. We talked for three hours. Three hours! My God man, three hours!

Without Ungflishlay, I don't think I would have made it through high school. I have too many stories about her, most of which she would come to the corn to slay me for revealing. Mostly, though, I think about how we'd go to the Shop 'n' Save on those cherished in-service days and procure a container of Kalamata olives, hummus, feta cheese, a loaf of French bread, and some German potato salad, which we'd eat al fresco in the park. Or of the night we went to Bar Harbor instead of going to our senior prom, and we laid on a blanket on Sand Beach and watched a meteor shower. Or of how she told me, upon going to her house for the first time, how the reddish stain on her house's kitchen linoleum was "where someone got murdered." Or of how, after all the Greek I taught her, the only thing she could remember was how to ask someone if they had octopus. Or the "whale testicle soup" at China Wall restaurant and the bleating noises at that first pep rally. Or of innumerable visits to Taste of India restaurant, possessed as it was of only one cassette of Indian music. And those endless conversations, long into the night, each knowing more and more about each other as the moments passed. Once, she became enraged because she found out I once took scuba lessons, and we'd known each other for about five years by then.

This one goes out to my kindred, to the woman who knows me better than I do myself, my minion, my best friend, my lungfish.

I remain, as ever,

Dom