Buried deep in this embittered Ivy community, some students have found happiness. Or, rather, they haven't lost it.

The three friendships below began well before Harvard. These eight friends gush about each other's wonderful personalities, marvelous histories and fantastic senses of fun. Hard as it may be to stomach, the saccharine coating on these students' lives is for real.

Aaron and McComma

Roommates Aaron S. Montgomery `00 and McComma Grayson `00 met while playing a game of Red Light, Green Light on the gravel playground of a Detroit elementary school. They knew each other as rivals from different homerooms--competitors in schoolyard pickup games like juice box football--but when homerooms ended in the fifth grade, this rivalry turned into friendship. Since then it's been happily ever after. "It sounds pathetic," Aaron confesses, "but we do have a lot of the same friends and we hang together. And a lot of times we know the same people but independent of each other."

The easygoing pair has a propensity for planning capers and getting into trouble. Take their ticket-scalping scheme for last year's Cultural Rhythms: "We bought 50 or 70 tickets and released them slowly," Aaron explains with a laugh. "It worked like a charm and we charged whatever the market would bear. We even got e-mails this year asking for tickets." (Perhaps this explains this year's two tickets-per-person limit.) Their troubles now tend to be more dangerous. "We almost got shot in Central Square," Aaron recalls. "Whenever we go out, trouble just finds us." "Trouble finds us for some reason," McComma echoes.

Christina and Damaris

The bond between Christina V. Farag `01 and Damaris Hernandez `01 didn't form instantly, but once it did, it stuck fast. When they met in the ninth grade, Christina confesses, "I didn't like her. I thought, `Who is this girl wearing a little hoochie shirt?'" They burst into a contagious giggle, and Damaris clarifies, "I have a round face, so she thought I was fat. I was wearing an outfit that a thin girl should wear."

Today, they carry on like an old married couple. Harvard has brought them closer--at home in New York, they live two hours apart; in Mather House, they live on either side of the same bathroom. Christina and Damaris, both literature concentrators, hope to attend law school and become judges. Together. After all, they almost share an identity. "In high school, my adviser, who was also a psychologist, said we were antisocial," Damaris explains. "We have all the same friends, but we do have friends. We just don't have friends by ourselves." When one is asked, "How are you doing?" she will often reply, "We're fine."

Christina and Damaris perceive their symbiotic tendencies, and they enjoy them. "I don't think I'll ever have anyone as close as her," Damaris says.

Josh and Jeff

When Josh Banerjee `00 and Jeffrey R. Gu `00 walked into their first period English class senior year of high school, the class broke into a standing ovation. That morning, Josh and Jeff had called Harvard and found out their early action decisions. Without knowing the results, the other seniors just assumed that the two had gotten in. "It was so cool," Jeff recalls. "The class gave us a standing ovation when I thought we were going to get a tardy."

Friends since middle school, these California boys chilled together in and out of class. "We basically have had the same classes together since seventh grade," Josh explains. Now they're roommates.

At Harvard, they share some mutual friends but are not "joined at hip," as Josh jokes. "We have separate toothbrushes and everything." The two live in Pforzheimer House, so happy together. "Josh is one of the most supportive people that I know. He really makes an effort to understand me," says Jeff. Josh adds, "We are content. Our life here is just awesome.

"Jeff's just awesome; he's the best friend you could ever ask for."