Tuesday, April 24, 2012

What Has Changed, or The Evolution of Being, part XI

Just as I was always there to pull her out of whatever crazy scrape she had gotten herself into, that girl was always there for me.

As children, our days were filled with bicycles, roller skates, hopscotch, jump rope, kick ball, tree forts, legos, Barbie's, skateboards, hide-and-seek, and lots and lots of laughter.

As pre-teens, boys began to fill our minds and bedroom walls. Ace of Base blasted on our stereos and we watched The Sandlot a hundred times to drool over Benny Rodriguez. "You're killin' me, Smalls!" became a regular part of our conversation. We watched TGIF on ABC for Uncle Jesse and Balki Bartokomous. Mr. Bean was our hero and Monty Python and the Holy Grail was our reality.

As teenagers, our late night walks around the block became vital to our survival in the dog-eat-dog world of high school. Not attending the same school, it was our only time to relieve the pressure of the daily torture received from the tongues of our classmates. And our only time to discuss our crush-of-the-week.

In college, everything changed. The rare phone call couldn't replace our midnight walks. And life got in the way.

She was the maid-of-honor at my wedding, one of the first people at the hospital to hold my new baby, and back every night for midnight walks during the two weeks that it took my mom to die. She cried with me and held me, knowing that she had lost a mother too.

And life got in the way.

I was the matron-of-honor at her wedding, the first person she called when they had to put her dog down, and the one she turned to when a childhood friend popped back into her life out of the blue.

This time - life will not get in the way.

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