Flat Miranda*

As a part of my occupation, we have a segment of the year that is devoted to reading the thrilling novel, Flat Stanley. Ultimately, the story is about Stanley; a careless boy who gets crushed by a bulletin board. A tragic and emotional tale that teaches its young readers about the importance of safety whilst hanging bulletin boards.

Just in case you were wondering, Stanley is unharmed (because this is a children's book, for goodness sake), except for the fact that he has been pressed like a pancake. He must live out his days thinner than the wall hanging that crushed him.

Surprisingly, his family doesn't sue Ikea, and allows Stanley to reap the benefits of being flat. He even gets to travel by mail to his friends who live far away.

And he catches bad guys, of course. How else do you justify this as readable literature without a cops and robbers plot line?

Anyway, the moral of the story I am trying to tell is that this book allows for my cohorts to send off their own Flat Stanleys to members of their family or friends who live far away. They send Stanley with a sheet that the recipient must return, detailing important info from their town/city/state/country.

Every time I vacation, I bring a copy of Flat Stanley to snap some photos of him doing awesome stuff. Then I tell my cohorts about his adventure the following year. It is a fun cycle, and Stanley has seen some awesome stuff:

That brings me to Flat Miranda*

So the year was 2014. I had returned from my third trip to Ireland (forever and always my favorite place in the world) and was trying to get my friends from home to go on a Friendcation with me the following summer. I wanted us to go to Ireland, because I loved it there and it was becoming very familiar territory.

Through much deliberation and monitoring world peace (at the time, Greece was on the fritz, so we removed it from our list of potential destinations), we decided on Italy (and Sweden for my one friend and I - see "7-Hour BFF").

Via Facebook event and bi-monthly video chats (2 people of our friend group live down south), we were able to plan out the trip's details.

-> Side note: we decided on Monterosso al Mare over the Amalfi Coast in the most logical way possible: my one friend (via video chat) threw little pieces of paper into the air and tried to catch one. Whatever was written on that paper was where we were going. Monterosso al Mare. Done.

So back to Miranda.

Our one friend, Miranda, was on the fence about going on the trip for the longest time... Not because she didn't want to go, but because she was starting her first year of residency... nbd.

In the end, she could not go.

We were all devastated. Heartbroken. Shattered.

This was supposed to be Friendcation Twenty-Fifteen!

But, never one to get too down and out, I used what I had learned from Flat Stanley (way back at the beginning of this post) to fix this seemingly insurmountable problem. I printed the most glamorous and glorious picture of Miranda off of Facebook (so many to choose from!) and taped the picture on all sides to keep it waterproof and wrinkle-free.

Physically, Miranda couldn't go, but her spirit would now live through the creatively laminated photograph, just like Flat Stanley!

And live it did. We took her picture everywhere we went and photographed her in all the selfies / Flat Stanley photo ops. Sometimes side by side.

My favorite memory with Flat Miranda was when we took her out in the gondola. We snapped a few photos whilst giggling uncontrollably, which eventually caught the attention of our hunky gondolier. We showed him her picture, and because we weren't thinking (due to jet-lag, over-stuffed stomachs, or mesmerization), we told him matter-of-factly, "This is our Miranda. She is not with us."

Immediately realizing that it sounded as if she had passed away and we were laughing about it, we tried to correct the miscommunicated vibes. But alas, our Jersey - English (the most difficult of Englishes to understand) may have kept us from truly explaining ourselves. There is some good-looking gondolier in Venice still thinking we are odd sickos from America who tote around their friend's picture posthumously. Probs not that uncommon.

So yeah. Flat Miranda had a great time. And I think the real Miranda appreciated it, too. Though she would have much rather eaten the 80 cones of gelato that we stopped for along the way herself, I feel as though Flat Miranda brought her at least a portion of that joy.

And she'll be on the next Friendcation 2018... but don't tell Flat Miranda she's out.

Skål xx

* her name is not Miranda... though you probably guessed that