The Reality of Partnership

This is a Polaroid of Mel from 2003, when we first met. Mel found it while cleaning the garage. We were 21 and and working at a hardware store. This picture hung on the “Get To Know Your Coworkers” board.

I stole it the day she quit.

It was around this time that I told Mel I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t know how to type, and I’d never read a novel, and I barely graduated high school, and I honestly didn’t know where to start. She didn’t run away. She didn’t see me as some pathetic, go-nowhere chump. All she said was, “Don’t worry. I’ll help you.” During that first semester, I handwrote all my papers. My handwriting and spelling were so poor that Mel couldn’t read them, so I’d sit next to her in that dumpy, one-bedroom, across-the-street- from-the-liquor-store apartment of her’s and read my papers aloud as she hunched over a keyboard and typed.