This GIF was perfect for my friend, which gave me a chuckle over her life philosophy and special brand of independence. It also made me think about her precocious kids and my precocious kids, who will grow up together, and how the little “worry about yourself” girl is now in elementary school, and life, and time, and identity, and whoa. The Internet is a strange and beautiful place sometimes.
For all the real-life interactions we rightly mourn being lost in these modern times, in that moment, there was a real feeling of connection with my friend, her friend, and our culture at large which has chosen this strange language, which had then connected me to a family in Indiana I’ve never met. In a childhood friend’s thread, a GIF of Clair Huxtable shaking her head wasn’t just that, but an acknowledgment of the shared specific culture in the specific time and place where we grew up. Nostalgia, history, understanding, belonging— not bad for a two-second loop.
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