Julie Beck
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Wenjia Tang The Friend COVID-19 Took From Me
“Baby and I would talk about growing old together.”
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WENJIA TANG A Fantasy-Football League Unafraid to Commit to the Bit
“We have a flag that we fly. We have a portable flagpole.”
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Wenjia Tang What a Simple Haiku Can Do for a Friendship
“I get a glimmer as to what she’s feeling right then, and it also gives me a way to share how I’m feeling with her.”
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Wenjia Tang When a White Republican Teen Invited a Black Pastor to Preach in His Hometown
“It is unlikely to think that someone who was trained by Strom Thurmond would end up being like brothers with me, my father being a civil-rights activist.”
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Wenjia Tang What Teacher Friends Talk About When Students Aren’t Listening
“I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day. I’m not in the place that I need to be, to be positive for the kids. Give me a boost; I need a laugh.”
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Wenjia Tang What It’s Like to Meet a Friend You Know Only From Video Games
“When he walked in and sat next to me, it was really weird. Like, Can you talk in my ear very closely so I can make sure it’s you?”
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Win McNamee / Getty Did You Wake Anyone Up to Tell Them Trump Has COVID-19?
On the impulse to tell the person next to you when a big story breaks
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Wenjia Tang When Your Job Turns You Into a Brand, You Need a Friend to Be Human With
“Something that totally changes your life like that, even if it’s overwhelmingly good, it still is overwhelming.”
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Wenjia Tang As the Military Transformed, Their Friendship Grew
“As a queer woman in the military, seeing both Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the combat-exclusion policy repealed [during my career] was momentous.”
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Wenjia Tang When Your Best Friend Gives Birth to Your Babies—All 4 of Them
“My kids know they’re a product of me and their dad, but that Debbie was our oven … They love her even more knowing the sacrifice she made.”
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Wenjia Tang The Empty Nesters Who Run a Bookstore—And Live Together
“A lot of people told me, ‘Don’t do it.’ I said, ‘But I love books and reading.’”
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Wenjia Tang 20 Years of Friendship With the Woman Across the Hall
“I used to joke and say, ‘If I died in my apartment, I knew that Barbara was the person who would find me.’”
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Wenjia Tang How the Hosts of ‘Call Your Girlfriend’ Saved Their Friendship
“With friendship, there is this expectation that it’s supposed to be easy, which … is not an honest assessment of what any long-term, intimate bond looks like.”
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Carlos Alvarez / Getty Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
As states and cities waffle on pandemic restrictions, public health has become individuals’ responsibility.
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Wenjia Tang The Pandemic Forced These Teens to Sail Home Across the Atlantic
“If you cross an ocean, you’re constantly together, and you just become a family.”
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Wenjia Tang These Two Generations of Best Friends Live Like Family
“When they were babies, we raised them together. We were always at each other’s houses, and the girls were always together.”
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Wenjia Tang What a Liberal and a Conservative Learned From Their Friendship
“I think it’s important that you remember who your friend is, that they are not just a set of political policies.”
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Wenjia Tang The High Drama of a Homemade Survivor Game
“It was an all-day game. I was thinking about it almost an obsessive amount.”
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Wenjia Tang The Endangered Art of Letter-Writing
“There’s nothing nicer than opening the mailbox and seeing something friendly, something that’s not a bill.”
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Wenjia Tang What It’s Like to Live Next Door to Your Best Friend Right Now
“We don’t have this superficial friendship where I’m only best friends with you when things are funny and happy … I’m also here for all the transitions and all the rough patches.”
