Wednesday, April 2, 2008

blast from the childhood past (now with humor!)

when i was a kid my family lived in spain, where we were friends with another american family called the bakers. the bakers had a bunch of kids (more than two and less than 12. i am afraid i can't be more specific than that) including two girls on either side of me age-wise, tina and elna (at least i am pretty sure her name was tina. if it's not becoming painfully obvious, a lot of these details are kind of fuzzy). i do clearly remember, though, playing barbies together and having sleep-overs and gorging ourselves on hard-to-come-by american treats like peanut butter and oreos. and then my family moved away and their family moved away and because my parents never send out a christmas card, we all lost touch.

that is until i was a junior in college and moved to london and it turned out the bakers were there, too (given the lack of christmas cards, i am not sure how i discovered this, but i did). by this time tina and elna had both flown the coop, tina on a mission (i think), and elna to nyu to study at the tisch school of performing arts. but, i had dinner with mama and papa baker a few times while i was there, and stored a bunch of luggage at their house while i went back-packing. the night before i came back to the states, mama baker made me a rootbeer float. and then i left and that was that. again.

until, just a few days ago. browsing on sweet suvi's blog, i stumbled on a video of one elna baker, a new york-based comedienne, performing a monologue on a program called "the rejection show." could it be? it looked like her. it sounded like her. and it was her. my childhood friend, elna baker. another miracle facilitated by this here interweb.

now, i don't have any clear memory of elna being particularly funny when we were kids, though she very well could have been. (i myself was a relatively un-funny child who has grown into an excessively hysterical adult.) but, either way, elna is damn funny now. yes, she is so funny that she deserves that swear. i laughed and laughed out loud until i cried at my desk watching this clip (it's funny because it's true!) and have retold the story many, many times. if i'm not careful, i might start to believe it is my own.



and the best news of all? i get to be friends with elna baker again. it will be just like old times, but funnier. and maybe fewer barbies.

4 comments:

Marcelina Moreno said...

You seem to know all the cool people, and it's just not fair! I have sent this clip to so many people, thank you for sharing.

Oertel said...

hahahahaaaaaaaaaaa Why are we twins? So, I visited the Bakers in London. Tina was my roommate. We were in the same ward for a bit in Seattle. We're facebook friends. You should find her. That's hilarious.

imitate said...

From the "small world" file, I don't know Elna Baker, nor any of her family members. However, I do know a man named Matthew Workman, but he doesn't know Elna either. He did post this same clip of Elna on his blog (which I highly recommend to everyone) several months ago, though. That Elna is a funny girl, and seems to make quite an impression on us Mormon folk, single or not. And for those of you interested, here's Matthew's blog site: http://workman.blogspot.com/
(Sorry, I don't know how to do the fancy hyperlinking.)

Christine said...

Hi, I am Elna's Mom. It was fun see your blog. Could you possibly send me your Mom's email. I was just talking about her to Patti Johansen and we were wondering where she is and what she is up to.