Dara Horenblas

Julie Fucking Mancini was my favorite grownup. From the time I was little, I was aware of how she talked to kids like regular people, not like kids, and how great that was. She was inquisitive, she swore, she made you feel seen. She did it with adults too, but I think about her basically every time I talk to a kid. Weirdly often, I think about a time in high school when our families were at the beach and Peter and I were making a run to the grocery store to buy ice cream. At the last minute, she came with us. She hopped in the back seat because she wasn't your average grownup who needed to prove she was in charge. She made the simple errand funnier like she made everything funnier. There's a note on my phone to remind myself of something she said last year when I was telling her about a job I didn't want to do... "It doesn't play to my strengths," she told me to say. Losing her doesn't play to my strengths either.