Your Oldest Friend

I met her when I was five, but we didn't really become friends until we were ten. We went to the same Catholic school together and then transferred to the public school in the fifth grade. We sat next to each other in a class and hit it off. Our personalities couldn't be more different, but the shy girl/loud girl dynamic is a good one. Two drama queens in a friendship never turns out well, and two quiet girls might have a lot in common, but won't be able to keep a conversation going.

As kids we fought and made up all the time. There was one legendary fight where we were at the public pool and she made me hold the locker key, which meant I couldn't go on the water slide. Big fight, promises of never speaking again, didn't talk for the rest of the day. Our moms made us say we were sorry, and we reluctantly did, then made faces at each other from the cars as we drove away. The next day she called me and asked me to come over, and I said okay. That's usually how it worked.

We stopped talking during freshman year in high school. The differences started to seem too big between us...the early bloomer and the late bloomer (guess which one I was). By the end of the year she wrote an apology in my yearbook, and we picked up where we left off like nothing ever happened. She was the tall blonde who had every boy in school wrapped around her finger. You would think this would have helped me to meet boys too, but I never cared for her taste in guys. My role was the mediator...I was the one who would call her boyfriend during fights to tell him her side and get his side.

Strangely enough, she introduced me to First Love. She worked with him, and offered to set us up. When we broke up, she introduced me to the next boy, who became my rebound. She was handy like that. When she broke up with her boyfriend, I counseled her for hours on the phone and then took her out dancing. We might go for long stretches without talking sometimes, but we've always been there for each other.

She's pregnant now, and I'm excited to see what she'll have. Will it be a boy like her brother who will have tons of energy and run her ragged? Or a girl like her, who will drive her crazy when she's a teenager? One thing is for sure...she got away with murder when she was young, but this kid won't get away with anything because she's done it all. And I'll be sure to tell him/her all about it.