Dear Randere,

It has almost been a year since I first met you! I remember I didn't think very much of it, when I was first meeting you, and it's a little funny how you get the best of your friends by not really thinking at all. Good fortune really did fall into my lap while I was busy looking at other things, and it is a good thing I am not optimistic, or else I might actually be cheered that everyday, I have someone like you by my side. But none of that mushy stuff, back to the past mushy stuff. I still remember looking over your various social networking sites and feeling, vaguely, that you were way too cool for me. You had the nicest icons! You blogged about the fanciest thing. You seemed really, really cool, and you played the cutest Wy. I couldn't ask for a better granddaughter, let's be honest. You had such a nice taste and a good feeling to you. It's hard to describe! It's a little like sunshine, a lot like cool hipster, and a pinch of cute. I remember you being briefly drowned out of your house, and the things you showed me, back when we were young and with a lot more cordiality and politeness than we do now. You showed me some things of IKEA (oh, how I should have known how this would be a good predictor for things to come) and talked about the panda on your bed, and I felt so pleased to know more about you.

But it was really your persistence and kindness that really shines out of you the best. Even if I punched you, you would just flow away like a jellyfish, I feel it. It's the way that you didn't let my frigid awkward distance, nor the horrendous jumble of things I was Going Through, drive you away. You were simultaneously shy and kind, and I still remember awkwardly texting you back after seeing a wallpaper that was like yours, and thinking that it still felt nice to talk to people and that, maybe, one day, I could recover and talk to people again. You reached out a hand that I didn't deserve, and even today, I still can't even hope to deserve. It feels like I underestimated your value by a thousand, because anybody who knows you should be happier to have done so.

You are an amazing person! In every single way and in every single thing you do. You quietly work hard without complaint, with a serious gravity that is only betrayed by your delightful personality. You display a cunning intelligence - do you know that one of the things I like most about Haruhi is that Kyon manages to display his knowledge in all his sarcastic inner comments with only a shrug? He references Valhalla without blinking an eye, discusses the depths of biology in watching Mikuru in a maid outfit, quotes Pope while playing chess with Itsuki and references complicated logical fallacies as he watches Yuki. And that's really like you, who only shrugs and occasionally mentions that yes, you're extremely competent and have high achievements in school, certainly, you have a job, what does that matter. You're absolutely brilliant, and a basement-dweller such as myself can only look on you with glimmering pride. I don't know what it is about you! Out of all the sins, I would be envy; but with you, it's just a smugness that someone like you would be friends with someone like me, some arrogant triumph, and, if I might say, my best triumph yet.

And what a brilliant friend that you are. If I tried to repay you back everything you've done for me, I would find wallowing around in the sheer debt. I personally would never want to be friends with me! I'm neurotic, nervous, prone to fits of depression, and always lashing out at the undeserving masses. But you persistently show your true colors again and again, with a persevering patience that has no reward. You suffer through my aimless wrath just to ask if there's anything wrong. You're a Good Friend, and I can quote all the Friends episodes to you and show you how you display every single one of those traits. If it's how a person treats their friends, that would be one thing. But it's the way you treat everybody with such great kindness and understanding, and the way you are very sweet about it. You constantly reach out a hand, with that same patience that you had shown me. You are a rock and an island and all the lakes in the land. Tarzan should have been shouting about how kind you were and how vastly underappreciated you must be as he swung through the forest, because that's all very true. You must be underappreciated, because there can't be any appreciation in this world that can fit the size of the debts to you.

Sometimes I do worry! Your penchant of quietness makes me feel like that I wouldn't be able to be there for you, and that's terrible. The worst case scenario would be if you broke your leg and drowned in a lake, but smaller circumstances will prevail, as well. And what I would do to be there for you! You're such a sweet person, and I can't see why anybody wouldn't be pleased to know you. You're very cute in your own way, with your addictive love for Denmark cats and sitting on your little stuffed panda, not to mention the way you dress your cat and watch her sleep. You have such your own dry wit for humor, and a quiet magnitude for everything that you see around you. You might not think it's cool, but for some reason, it is still cool to me that you watch sitcoms and Jersey Shore, pet your cat, drive a car. Maybe that's the thing with cool people, after all. It's not what they do that makes them cool, but just who they are. You've given me so many gifts, some literal (the buttloads of icons that I have forced you at gunpoint to make for me, the cute little England keychain that cheerfully hangs from my colored pencils) and some more metaphorical (linking pictures of losers to me - metaphorical, of course, because there is no way those losers could literally be gifts to anybody.) You've helped me with my homework like a doting mother, listened to my problems like a doting father, and let me push you over and roll you down a hill like a doting lover. Because that's what they do, right?

It has nearly been a year, Randere! I can't remember the exact dates, since I'm terrible at maths (all of them). But now it's your birthday! Another year, another great debt owed to you that I am afraid you will have to eventually just write off as gone to the dumpsters, because the greatness that you constantly show isn't something that I, as a peon, can anywhere make up to you. Happy Birthday, Randere! You are 21 now, with real whine with that cheese, and if I had a drink, then I would drink to twenty-one years of your life that has certainly been so good to the world. Today is your day!

Here's to you, from the worst best friend you could ever hope to have,
Scarfalo