Bestie Dianne messaged me a few months ago to ask for a list of professional and academic credentials of Smoketh. Dianne and Smoketh went to the same high school decades ago, and Dianne wanted to nominate Smoketh as this year’s Amazing Alumna. I said I’d try to contact our other friends who work closely with Smoketh in their medical society, so that we could get more concrete evidence that she is indeed amazing and worthy of adulation. We almost missed the deadline for the submission of requirements, but with enough connections and sufficient franticness everything was completed the weekend before the ultimate deadline. Then we waited.

Bestie Dianne messaged us this morning with enough crestfallenness to announce that Smoketh has failed to snag the Amazing Alumna award. She wanted to thank the supporters for their efforts, and said that in our heart of heart of hearts Smoketh is truly amazing. True, but the only appropriate response to this was: Ok, Dianne. How do we file a protest?

Truly the judges have missed how amazing Smoketh really is, so we decided to come up with a list of why Smoketh is the one true amazing alumna of 2022! Granted all of these are intangible and won’t fit any criteria in the judges’ scoring sheet, but Smoketh has recently celebrated her birthday and I didn’t get her a gift. So:

1. She has a good batting average when it comes to setting people up. With her acute sense of discernment, she knows who among her friends will be a romantic fit for each other, no matter how ridiculous the pairing might be on the surface.
2. She taught us to hate material things. Because in the end, everything will turn out to be clutter. What we want is space, an area where we can freely move around, without stepping on an Estonian matryoshka doll or bumping into a replica of the Black Nazarene.
3. She knows all our deep, dark secrets. Like the darkest.
4. She discovered the Shrine Motherfucker 1, that dark, tiny corner in a coffeeshop in a hotel along Adriatico that boasts of an exclusive, deluxe electrical outlet on the wall beside it. The Shrine Motherfucker 1 was where she had brought friends from different groups together, merging them all and creating new groups and sub-groups of friendship. 60% of my friends are probably a result of these mergers.
5. She can conduct remote teaching rounds wherever she is, whether she is in a Leni rally or at the beach. Even as we were munching on our chori burger in Discovery Shores Boracay, we were giving her the evil eye for teaching her fellow-in-training how to properly correct sodium. In our heads, just drop the call and eat your fucking hamburger! But she is a teacher by heart, and her vocation comes first!

Update: Aggiedala Swaggerelya has the following to add to the list!

6. She’s generous with her time. And time is a very scarce resource. Ang pera pwedeng kitain, ang oras hinde!

7. She’s Miss Friendship, able to strike up conversations with mere acquaintances and eventually forging eternal friendships with them.

8. She’s very enabling, I mean encouraging. She appreciates you even if you’re a tone-deaf alto.

9. She laughs heartily, and has good English grammar.

And so we say, we protest!

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