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I did a journaling exercise last week and it was kinda cool. My goal was to write about the most fascinating/impactful person I know. It took me all of three seconds to search my brain and come up with an answer. With all certainty the most fascinating person I know is my friend, Prowla. With a name like Prowla, how couldn’t he be fascinating, right?
Prowla and I met almost 15 years ago. I’ll never forget the day that I met him and how I thought to myself Lord, you make people this funny?? I could not wait to introduce him to everyone I knew because he wasn’t just hilarious… he was creative and wise and quickly became family to me without me even realizing it. I felt like EVERYONE needed to know Prowla… The barista at Starbucks, all of my close friends, the homeless man that cussed at people outside of Mary Macs Tea Room on Ponce De Leon Ave.. Just everyone… EVERYONE NEEDED TO KNOW PROWLA!! It didn’t take long for me to realize that most people who knew Prowla enjoyed him as a person and understood exactly where I was coming from. You could always count on him to make you laugh while also making you think.
In my early 20’s Prowla said something that was one of the most important pieces of wisdom that anyone has ever said to me. I don’t even remember what we were talking about, but he looked at me and said, “think of the most outlandish thing you can think of and just know, whatever it is, someone has done it and it’s normal to them.” He said it in a very laissez faire way and moved on to the next subject as I stood there thinking and thinking and THINKING. I didn’t know it then but now as I comfortably settle into the back-end (waaaay back-end) of my thirties, I realize that he planted a seed, shifted my mindset and was urging me to think outside of my own experiences. He wasn’t telling me to walk in anyone else’s shoes. He was simply suggesting that I recognize that everyone was not a size 7 Nike Huarache. It was the first gut punch I ever received that actually allowed me to breathe.
Throughout the years, Prowla has dropped several life gems and kept me in stitches without even trying to. There would be days when I would open Instagram and someone would have posted an innocent picture of a cat or something, and there Prowla would be in the comments with a single line that would make me giggle like “don’t eat that.” The whole post would then become less about the picture of the cat and more about the person who took the picture of the cat, not eating the cat! LOL! It was just enough silly to make Instagram worth opening on some days. A classic case of Innocent laughs created by someone who genuinely loves people!
So to the VERY talented content creator, videographer, photographer, singer, engineer but most importantly friend turned brother, Prowla.. Thank you for being fascinating. Thank you for all of the conversations we had back then that helped shape my “right now.”
To my fellow journal writing friends. Who is your most fascinating friend and how have they impacted you?