who we were....

to each other.

First you have to understand the kind of kid I was.
I was shy and anxious, a worry-wart and a crier
to the ninth degree. If you were to ask anyone that
I went to school with what they remembered about me,
they would say that I had cried...alot.

I cried and worried and obsessed to the point
that my grade one teacher actually wrote in my
grade one report card that I may need psychological
help. Psychological help. In grade one.

It doesn't get much sadder than that.

Heh. Heh.

So I had some trouble making friends because I
was obviously busy worrying about a war or severe
thunder and lightning storm or whatnot.

But I had never had trouble being R's friend.
Out of anyone that I have ever known, with the
exception of my husband, no one has ever known
me to the degree that she did then. I have since
made best friends that know me as best they can,
but R was the one who knew me then...she was
the one that I never felt uncomfortable or unsure
around. She was like my sister in that way.

Today, I will admit that I have some aura of
reservation around me. I don't mean for it to be
there, but it is. People are unsure of how to take me.
I am liked, but people don't come up and give me
an unexpected hug or even pat my arm...I just give
off some kind of vibe that way...and I don't mean to.
But I often wonder if it is because thats how we were,
we were that close...we wrestled, we hugged, we sat
on each other's knee or shared a chair even if
there was an empty one right next to us. I never
thought twice about giving her a punch in the arm
or a kiss on the forehead, wherever we were.
And now, maybe some part of me holds off on that
because that feels like it was ours...and can't be duplicated.

We used to play with barbies. We would lock ourselves
in the bathroom because it was the only room with a lock
on the door to give us some privacy from all the siblings.
We would pretend the bathroom sink was the pool for the
barbies. They sported very attractive, useful masking tape
bikinis and toilet paper squares were the not-so-absorbent
choice for towels.

Sometimes, we would play with the siblings...to our advantage.
We played house and we would divide the siblings up like
so many cattle to be herded into our (bedroom) houses.
We would empty her mother's closet out onto the floor
and divide up all her clothes. Then we would send the kids
to one house (bedroom) to play, while we sat and had coffee
(koolaid) and gossiped in the other house (bedroom).

We also used to play dentist in the bathroom and my younger
brother was usually the victim, or rather, patient. We would
fill his cavities with fillings of wet toilet paper and make him
braces from wet, twisted toilet paper.

We played with fisher price little people much longer than
it would have been cool to admit to. We used to search out
the best things to improvise as house furnishings. That was
pretty much the whole game, just furnishing your house.

We used to sing the "a my name is arlene my husbands name is albert
we live in alberta and we sell apples" song constantly.

We spent every holiday together. She came on our vacations with us.
We went to the water park and she hated that I hated the water.
We went camping and scoped out cute boys to giggle over. We shared
headphones in the backseat of my parents car and sang Madonna's "Papa
Don't Preach" at the top of our lungs.

We went to town together as a family, often in the same car.
Her mother would drive and people would stop and marvel
at the number of children getting out of the backseat of that
broken down old car.

One Easter, there was a snowstorm and none of us had any power.
They spent Easter with us. I got rollerskates from the Easter Bunny
that had rainbow colored straps. We shared them. I wore one and
she wore the other and we rollerskated upstairs from the bathroom
to the bedroom and back again.

One year for Christmas, I bought her a jewellry box and she bought
me a snowglobe with a unicorn in it. After she died, her parents
gave me the jewellry box back.

Another year for Christmas, I bought her the red stuffed "monster"
she had been coveting when we skipped school and went to Zellers.
She bought me the stuffed purple polka-dotted dinosaur I had
been drooling over on the same outings to Zellers.

She came with me on my first date.

And my second.

We tried to get drunk one night when her parents weren't home.
We mixed the vodka with kool-aid and made some popcorn.
I kept saying that I smelled something but it wasn't until we
were just about to toast our first drink, when I realized
what I could smell was not vodka...it was turpentine.

We had to throw out the jug and the cups.

I could make her laugh no matter what.
No matter when.
No matter how.
I could make her laugh like no else could.
I know that.
I know that for sure.
We were not allowed to eat together at birthday parties
because I would make her laugh and juice would
come out her nose. I once made her laugh so hard
at McDonalds that she threw up and then wouldn't
come out of the bathroom because she was too
embarassed. I had to go in and tell her about the old
lady next to us blaming the boy sitting with us for
making her laugh-and-puke so that she would laugh
again and come out.

We lived within walking distance from each other
and would walk back and forth from one house to the other
for the sake of being together and being alone. We
would sing at the top of our lungs and hope we
were driving the neighbors crazy.

We said things like "fuck a duck" and
"i don't know why she swallowed a fly"
"i guess she'll die" and then laughed like
crazy.

We loved bon jovi and would scream at all the
same places in the videos. To this day, I cannot
watch a "livin on a prayer" video or "you give a love
a bad name" without getting a little sick to my stomach
when he looks at the camera and scrunches his
nose or shakes his hair cause those were "our parts".

We listened to madonna, prince, billy idol, ac-dc,
the cult, poison, wham, cinderella, ratt, bon jovi,
micheal jackson, samantha fox, motley crue.
We watched video hits every day religiously and
taped our favorite videos. We watched Good Rockin'
Tonight on friday nights at eleven. We loved
Threes Company, Facts of Life, Happy Days....
when we played "pretend" I was often Leather
Tuscadero and she was Pinky. We both had a
crush on Chachi.

I knew that when she got really excited about
something on a movie or tv show, she couldn't
sit still....she would be on the edge of her seat
and biting her nails and fidgeting. This happened
everytime the Fonz had to jump over some fiery
thing with his motorcycle to prove his "fonziness".

We loved saturday morning cartoons much later
in life than it was cool to. We loved the smurfs,
muppet babies, the flintstones, jem, kidd video.

We fought. We fought the way I have never
felt comfortable fighting with anyone else since.
But we always made up. And laughed.

We used to keep scribblers where we would
write back and forth to each other instead of
just writing "notes". If for some reason or another
we were grounded from visiting each other or
phoning, we would write notes in these scribblers
and have our younger brothers bike them
back and forth. I now have sole ownership
of all the scribblers.

People often mistook us for sisters.

And we let them.