Common bonds create close friendships

By Stephanie Ackerman

They sat in the same room together during two competitions back in Texas, but cherubs Erin Jentz and Alyson Weiss never met. While attending the program, the pair became friends right away.

“To think we were in the same room for some competitions back in Texas and never knew each other is crazy,” Jentz said. “It’s been really nice having someone else from Texas. She gets the other Texas jokes and references that no one else would understand.”

The cherub program allows people from the same cities and even the same schools to learn more about each other and become better friends.

Jentz and Weiss are from the same city in Texas, but had never met since they go to different schools.

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Cherubs Alyson Weiss and Erin Jentz sing along to "Taylor the Latte Boy" before a field trip into Chicago. "The song is very bonding," Weiss said. "Two people can't listen to the song together without forming a connection."

“I want to say it’s surreal,” Weiss said. “Here’s this girl who lives 10 minutes away from me and I never knew her before.”

They met on the first day of the program. Jentz had read there was another girl from Texas and overheard Weiss checking in.

“Erin came up and asked me if I was the other girl and then helped me with my suitcases,” Weiss said. “I don’t think she would have talked to me right away if I hadn’t been from Texas.”

Jentz and Weiss didn’t start hanging out together at first. They each floated around with other people, Weiss said. However they grew closer as the program progressed.

 “We have so many inside jokes,” Weiss said, “Sometimes it was hard because other people didn’t understand.”

There are other cherubs who had known each other before, though not as well as they do now after spending five weeks together, going through the same trials and deadlines. Margaret Parsons knew someone else from her newspaper staff who was also a cherub.

“It was really nice in the beginning having someone here I knew and was comfortable with,” Parsons, a cherub from Michigan, said. “After a while we formed our own friends and circles. It will be nice to go back home and have someone who understands what I went through and help me teach the staff what I learned here."

• Elise Brown, a cherub from Chicago, is an artist in her spare time, but no one knew about her abstract black and white pieces until the last week of the program. She sells her artwork online.

• Justin Schecker, a cherub from Maryland, started learning Arabic last year.

• Laurel Stankus, from Illinois, broke her foot while playing leap frog two years ago and has also torn a ligament in her ankle while swing dancing.

• Jenny Temple, a cherub from Florida, cannot ride a bike.

• There were 21 people from California, nearly 25 percent of the cherubs.

• There were three pairs of cherubs from either the same city or the same school.

• CAs paired cherubs with similiar or related names (for example, Dallas and Austin).

After cherubs, the pairs who are from the same areas plan on staying in touch.

“I hope we can get together and laugh about all of the crazy things we did,” Jentz said.