Can I Sit With You?

By Jessica Ellis
Age 18 at the time

When I was in college, there was this girl that I desperately wanted to be friends with. I didn't know anything about her really, but she looked interesting and I thought we would click. Of course, it's kind of weird to walk up to someone and say, "Hey, you look cool. Wanna be best friends?" So instead, I tried a different tactic. I decided to take advantage of the fact that we had a class together, and what's more, we had the same backpack. I walked up to her one day after class and hit her with a brilliant line: "Hey! We're backpack twins!"

"Uh-huh." She speed-walked away from me. (To this day, I appreciate that she refrained from actually running.) Somehow, that wasn't quite the perfect friends-forever opening line that I had imagined.

Epilogue: We encountered each other again the next year, and actually did become friends. The term "backpack twins" no longer makes either of us cringe.