When I was 12 I met my best friend, again. We'd sort of known each other in fifth grade when we were in different classes, but both liked the same boy. That lasted about two days when we each realized he was a weasel. She moved away, and moved back in seventh grade, where we met over the lunch table commandeered by the oddballs who stuck together out of sheer self-preservation and really good lunch trades. It wasn't long before we visited each other's houses, watching Dr. Who and inventing games wherein we were beautiful, tragic Greek goddesses come to life. We laughed more than talked, and we talked a lot. We played the mad psychiatrist game, where one of us tossed out words and the other did word association, starting with normal things like cat-dog, blue-sky, and degenerating to bacon-pig, truffle-pig, boys-pigs, pig pig pig and a mad tickle chase. I sort of miss that. Somewhere in there we and our group of oddball friends discovered Bloom County and Duran Duran, and more fashions than I ever want to remember (but they're back! How could the world make the same mistakes twice?). Right before we turned 17, she moved. I visited her that summer -- we rode the bus and spoke in British accents, snuck frozen yogurt into the movies (hint: yogurt melts, and it's sticky), and tried to drive her mother's stick shift. When school started, we sent each other 10-page letters and cassette tapes with our random thoughts and wild imaginings, stories and jokes, skits and song (she could sing, I bellowed). I went to college on her side of the state, visiting not nearly as much as I'd have liked, and somewhere in there we discovered Boys. I married and divorced mine, she's still married to hers with four teenagers now, two of whom I still owe baby quilts (can you hang on 'til college?). It seems like just a few years ago I saw the first one born and watched the second one smash peaches into her whispy Einstein-baby hair.
Anyway, she's here: http://candidalias.blogspot.com
