Kristen & Kristin

I guess it just happens to some folks. Their lives get filled with people with the same names or names that sound the same. It’s not just with Kristen, Kristin, Kirsten and Kristen but also with Chris and Chris (former and current boyfriends) and Heather and Heather (one of my best friends and my boss). Often when I tell a story, I have to use last names even with the closest people in my life.

Until I was 5, it was just Kirsten. There was no confusion. She was my little sister. Then I started kindergarten. Kristen Haggerty stepped into my life in Mrs. Hunter’s classroom wearing bright red clogs. She giggled a lot and seemed carefree. When we played house in the nap/loft area, I liked to pretend I was washing dishes while Kristen preferred to go on the top loft and play. She wasn’t a big pretender, she was herself all the time. This intrigued me. We became friends and then quickly established ourselves as “Best Friends.” By the time we were seniors in high school, we had been enmeshed in each other’s lives for 12 years. A sense of mutual respect remains to this day, but spending eight hours a day side by side for 12 years (we studied ballet together after school and during the summer) can take its toll on any relationship.

Kristen is the oldest of four children, I am the oldest of five. Her house was equipped with sugar cereal, Atari, a pool, a camcorder, a microwave, a dishwasher, three bathrooms, a water bed and a bedroom for each child. My house was not. I was a little nervous around all those fancy things. My house was old and constantly in flux. Whenever friends wanted to come over, my reply was something like “The hallway is getting painted” or “Our bathroom is getting fixed.” Our house at 106 Elm Street had five bedrooms so we were one short. I think that Danny and Gretchen, my youngest two siblings, missed the room assignment stage of life and sort of floated between bedrooms until I left for college when they were 8 and 10 years old. Our house had one working bathroom for seven people. It never seemed like a challenge but I certainly don’t recommend it for family dynamics.

I have a photo album of all my elementary school class pictures. Kristen Haggerty is missing from the 5^th grade one because she was at Disney World. Each time I see that photo, I remember holding it for the first time and thinking 3 things: my saddle shoes are dirty, my pigtails are asymmetrical, and Kristen is in Florida. I don’t recall feeling particularly jealous, after all I’m not a big amusement park fan (just look at the photo of me and my dad on the jumbo slide at my first carnival), but I was envious of her return to school. Our classmates would crowd around to ask, “How was Epcott?”, “Did you ride the Matterhorn?”, “Was Space Mountain wicked awesome?” I didn’t even know what questions to ask, I had no idea what the rides were called. I wondered how everyone else knew. Did they go to Disney World, too? Or were they just more informed than I was?

The first time I stepped on to an airplane was when I was 16. Destination: Moscow, Russia. A different sort of amusement park. This one consisted of underage drinking, my first unrequited love, a midnight express train from Moscow to St. Petersburg and nights at the discotheque. This is a story for later.

I wasn’t interested in Disney World, but I was definitely interested in people crowding around to ask me questions. Not having been to any exotic places by the time I was ten years old, I didn’t get many questions and later decided that traveling would make those questions happen. Hence, the trip to Russia and then the fear of staying put in one place for more than two years. I have a fear of becoming unquestionable.

In my family, things took precedence over Disney World. Things my dad continues to believe in and things my mom would “do differently” (quotes because she honestly wouldn’t). [Things consciously done: private hockey, ballet, and baseball lessons when everyone else was Disney Worlding, visits to the Boston Children’s Museum, the Boston Garden and Fenway Park, and wondrous things like relishing in the home-made ice skating rink that my dad built in our backyard. Unconscious things including: staying home and watching a film on Channel 38’s “The Movie Loft” while Tommy sat behind the couch repeatedly picking his nose and wiping it on the soft brown fabric, and family outings to “Baskin Robbins” for sundaes.] My dad doesn’t regret things because he’s committed to feeling proud of his stamp: his children are smart, conscientious, well-rounded individuals with lots of potential. My mom regrets things because she’s committed to feeling that her stamp has not surfaced: her children are smart, conscientious, well-rounded individuals who have not realized their potential.

My ignorance of the details about Disney World are not surprising. I was clearly busy with other things. And I suppose if you lack the desire, you lack the knowledge (or vice versa).

Speaking of knowledge and desire.

I met Kristin Stead in kindergarten, too. She was taller than all of the students, with long blonde hair and she was smart. Kristin Stead asked me what my dad did for a living and although I cannot recall what my response was, I knew that he played on the Bruins and the Red Sox. The NHL season lasted from October to April and the baseball season lasted from April to October. It worked out nicely for his schedule (or my imagination, which appreciated that the professional sports world adjusted its schedule for my dad’s incredible talent). Since my dad was buddies with all the players, he called them by their last names just as he did with his friends from Roslindale. The only difference was that his friends from Roslindale weren’t broadcast on television at 7:35pm. Kristin Stead must have set me straight, though, because shortly after our encounter it dawned on me that my dad was on the couch and the Bruins were on TV. I think I always held that against Kristin: she got my dad fired.