I Only Ever Called Her Lisa

When we're younger, time is condensed. A month when we're sixteen may feel the same as five years when you're in your thirties. It's a sort of emotional variation of Einstein's theories. I look back on those years from 16 to 21 and they seem enormous. I lived a life time in those five years.

I love Lisa. She was my best friend for about six months when we were in our teens. How can you not think of that time as different from your later life? "Best friend for six months" means almost nothing to me at this point in my life, but means a whole lot when thinking back on what every minute meant in those days- every second.

I remember her as beautiful first. This isn't meant to diminish her other qualities, it was just so obvious to everyone who met her. Lisa was beautiful, but she was also smart. She was also strong and she was also funny.

I sort of met her in 1975. She worked in the library at Indiana Junior High School. I was a goon- an absolute goon. I was looking for something. Was I? I don't recall, but I remember how kind she was to me- with her beautiful 14 year old smile. There's not much to smile about when you're fourteen, but she found something.
I met her again when she was probably 16 or 17. We did plays together. She was one of the "big kids" but she included the rest of us. I also knew her from my High School Art Class. The longest class period of the day was fifth period. It was when all the classes had lunch. For whatever reason, it was also the time where they gathered all of the art students who were most interested in art. They were mostly boys. We were all trying our damnedest to be non-conformists- more thought was given to that than to actually painting anything. Lisa was one of us. We didn't trust girls then. We trusted her because she was smart, funny, beautiful and strong. Lisa was always a girl and she was always strong. We liked her in the art room and we liked her in the school theatre.

Lisa made sure that I got together with my high school sweetheart and made a point to make me feel welcomed with the older kids who had known each other since grade school. She dated my friends and my heroes. We talked on the phone a lot- like teenagers do. She would just stop by at my house. She adopted me as a sort of mascot. I was so flattered.

Lisa and I were in so many plays together, when you include High School, Community Theatre and College, it probably amounted to a couple dozen. For awhile, right after high school, we always acted opposite of each other. She was the beautiful, smart and funny girl, I was the awkward, goofy boy.

We drifted apart. It happens. By the time we were 18 or 19, we probably both were looking to reinvent ourselves. We remained sort of-friends. We acted in shows together, took theater classes together and didn't necessarily avoid each other. She was beautiful, smart and funny and I was trying to figure out how to live in my own skin.

I lost touch with her in the mid-eighties. I heard she passed away from my good friend Joe. It's been years and I'm still not over it. I loved Lisa. I love her now. It breaks my heart to think of her suffering. I wonder why we didn't do a better job of remaining friends. It happens, I guess.
I think of her family for time to time and hope that they aren't too sad. I can't imagine how hard it must be for them. I dislike the fact that Lisa is gone. Yes sir, I dislike it very much.
-Ian
June 13, 2006

Wedding story

A fond memory of LB:
At her wedding, I was talking to an acquaintance, someone I didn't know well but who was a close friend of Lisa's. Out of the blue, this person asked me to dance, a slow close dance. After it was over and I sat down, Lisa came up behind me and kissing me on the cheek whispered in my ear "Was it everything you dreamed?" Then I knew: somehow LB knew I had long harbored a secret attraction to this person and had been too shy to ever take any action. She had somehow convinced this person to dance with me, to quietly fulfill the romantic fantasy for one of her shy friends on a day that should have been all about Lisa Davis, new bride.
--posted for a friend who asked their name be withheld

Lisa Judges Fashion

Lisa sat beside me in Ninth grade English class. I was beginning to come out of my Ugly Duckling adolescent phase, or at least I was trying to. One day I remember wearing a new, matching blouse and skirt and to top it off, the ever-fashionable platform shoes! Lisa looked at me, gave me a thumbs up and said, "Great outfit!" I felt like I had arrived! Lisa was like that. She wasn't afraid to let you into the club.
– Nell (Hoffman) Coleman

Lisa Davis on getting from A to B

Ginger Hulbert writes:

Lisa Davis, my beautiful friend through high school and college.

She loved to sing and to draw flowers. We used to sit in her kitchen and draw endless pictures of flowers. I know that sounds hokey but it is true. She was much better at it than I was. We acted together in productions at IHS, IUP and PVP. Lisa had a funny kind of guttural giggle that was at odds with her petite size, so I was always trying to get her to laugh. My favorite Lisa memory is once when we were done with rehearsal in Waller Hall, she needed a ride home and I was car-less, so she got this great idea. We walked over to the infamous Pizza House on the corned of Oakland and 10th St. Lisa walked up to the counter and said "I would like to order a pizza to be delivered and I need to be delivered with it!" She ordered her pizza with such confidence as if her request were nothing out of the ordinary and was so cute batting those big lashed eyes, how could the swarmy guy behind the counter refuse her. Lisa was delivered!

IHS block

The First Pretty Girl Who Ever Talked To Me

I'm not ready to write anything yet, but here are two pictures I have of Lisa. One is from a college production of Rhinoceros from 1980 (I'm the other person). The other is a cartoon I drew of her during the fall of 1978.

-Ian Gallanar June 7, 2006