For Whom the Skype Ping Tolls

Greetings and salutations, dear singers of the Hayleylujah Chorus! My name is PJ and I am Hayley’s friend, comrade and consistent cause of eyebrow twitching. It’s so good to finally meet you, as I hear about you guys CONSTANTLY; time and again I’m told you hear of me as well. I feel as if we are already good friends, remember the time I dyed my hair pink accidentally? Ha, good times.

What am I doing here? Well, as you should certainly know by now Hayley Hoover is a procrastinator (aren’t we all?), so I should have foreseen the impending request to fill in for a night but this was not so- after enjoying my supper of hot and frozen pizzarolls, the skype ping woke me from my greasy cheese-filled stupor.

Hayley Hoover: wanna write my blog for me?

PJ Scott-Blankenship: ...who are you? Are you feeling well?

Hayley Hoover: shh

PJ Scott-Blankenship: OH I GET IT, it's still August…you're doing BEDA still

Hayley Hoover: yes.

Hayley Hoover: seriously, wanna write my blog for me?

PJ Scott-Blankenship: *sigh* fine

So here I am, feeling like a complete fool with no idea how to carry on a one-sided conversation with a thousand strangers. How are you? What is your favorite movie? Do you like Mario? All I can say is that I’m happy to be here, and even happier to have Hayley as a friend. Oh! There’s an idea, let’s get some insight into the enigma known as Hayley G. Hoover-please note: the enigma is probably laying stomach-down on her bed wondering if her own kitchen has pizzarolls.

All I can say is that above all else, Hayley makes very real and deep connections with the things she cares most about, and you know something? You all are on that list. Hayley is very aware of the community around her, and though modest about it takes an unimaginable amount of time reading every email, atreply, comment, and reply she gets. The prime example of this the tale of how I met Hayley Hoover.

Wanting to start a new life, I left my tiny town on the Scioto River and ran to Athens to attend Ohio University, hoping with every ounce of my being I could escape the legacy of the 25-student-class from which I graduated. On my own I rolled my pudgy self across the hills of OU, and after a long day, I sat at the dining hall with my mother-I looked up and rubbed my eyes thinking I saw something familiar but the image had since darted away like an antisocial fish in a crowded pond…full of frat..fish in a…school. Okay, I tried to make a fish and school and education joke there, WHATEVER.

Anyway, bright and early the next morning I completed orientation by being the first in my group to register for classes and thus was let go, with laptop on…lap, I sat near the escalators of the university center, and felt my eyes glance up for no reason whatsoever. I need to preface the following by saying, I am/was a proud member of the lonelygirl15 community, and on our community blogspot there was a featured story about a popular girl on youtube who happened to look like the character Sarah. Now, slowly descending before my very eyes like a squirrel-kissing angel I saw her, my mind compiled the facts to confirm what I saw:

Thinking it was a real kismet moment, I uploaded a video there on the spot, never actually thinking she’d watch it, let alone that we’d meet for real, and that we’d end up being incredibly close and sharing so much together.

When I came out of the closet Hayley was there; when I was left friendless and forgotten on Halloween Hayley was there, when I had a huge birthday party and invited all my friends Hayley baked the cake, when I was locked out of the school’s computer system and thought I had failed a midterm Hayley stuffed pizzarolls down my throat, and when Hayley and I made plans for the summer…Hayley forgot but her mom was there and then Hayley was there with a vengeance!

I think about how easily and strangely I came to know this girl, and I know that many of you would give so much to switch me places and are probably more deserving of it, and all I can say is that for the rest of my friendship with Hayley, I promise you that everything we do will be in your names, because if it wasn’t for great support like you Hayley wouldn’t do what she does and I’d never know her. I am eternally grateful for you guys, and will never be able to thank you enough.

Yours truly,

PJ

You can subscribe the heck out of PJ's awesome videos here and here, and read his blog here, and follow him on twitter.