best friend

Ok, I’m back and I’ve sobered up.

Day 07 – Your best friend, in great detail

(was going to post this yesterday when I wrote it, but first I was going to find some pictures of us to show - sadly, Christy is pretty camera shy and in all of the pictures she looks horribly uncomfortable* and I'm overcompensating by leaning into her like a lovesick weirdo. Or it's just my teeth and her hair.)

(*who knew seven year olds could look uncomfortable?)

This is going to be difficult as well. Like my parents, I’ve known my best friend for most of my life and there’s just so much to say it’s easier for me to not say it at all. But I’ll try.

First off, I struggle with the term “best friend.” I remember in high school I had two “best friends” (Shelly and Pam), and my regular “best friend” (who I’m going to write about today) who went to a different school. Someone once told me I couldn’t have THREE best friends, and that kind of crushed me. But I persevered! And now all of my friends are my best friends. They are simply the best at what they do – Pam is best at geeking out with me, Danielle is best at drunken shenanigans, Jodi is best at making me laugh until I want to punch her (or making me want to punch her, period), but Christy is best at bringing out my best, I think. Christy is best at being all things (minus drunken shenanigans – gal doesn’t partake, the horror!), of being whatever I need her to be when I need it, and I like to think I do the same for her. Shopping buddy? Check. Can you make this cake? Check. Where should I hang this picture? Check. Shoulder to cry on, make fun of husbands, what do I plant in this spot, check, check and check, ma’am.

This is going to be a long story probably.

CHRISTY – AN EPIC BLOG.

First of all, anyone who knows her can agree that she is the best person that ever walked this earth. She is kind and generous and sticky-sweet. She’s careful with her money, her words, her actions, her life – she is careful. She is reliable. She never changes, no surprises here, no sir! She treats everything in life almost like it’s glass. She is incredibly smart and witty, and she is also a smart-ass. I don’t think maybe people know what a sarcastic little sassy-pants she can be, or that every once in a blue moon she will utter the “d” word, but she does these things. She does get furiously mad at things sometimes, but it’s like watching a kitten gnaw on something angrily – it’s mostly adorable and you want to stick your hand out to see if it hurts (it does not).

Sometimes when she’s playing like she’s mad at you, she’ll throw her hands up like claws and hiss. If you don’t pee your pants right then and there, you are immune to her. Impossible, though, I assure you.

She’s a calm, collected cat to my over-eager, spastic dog. We are exact opposites.

When I was a kid, I went to an elementary school that is literally right down the road from where I live (how many times do I have to tell y’all how much of my soul is stashed in my hometown?). I started there in kindergarten (naps on sweaty plastic pads, reading time in Mrs. Spruill’s lap, Trent making fun of my first pair of glasses – he is now my neighbor, for an added small town twist) but that’s not important – what’s important it first grade, when I was six years old.

One day I went out to recess and I remember I was wearing this grey and white dress. This dress was special in that when you spun around really fast, the skirt would fly out and you could feel like a ballerina (if, as a child, you thought ballerinas danced like drunken, dizzy lunatics). So I took my special dress and my skinny toothpick legs and parked myself in front of my favorite playground spot – in front of two oak trees whose trunks were growing together, just enough space to walk up – hands on one side, feet on the other – and I SPUN. I SPUN AND SPUN AND SPUN. And when I stopped, there was someone spinning with me. A dark haired, crooked toothed little lady in her own dress (black with little hot pink and turquoise flowers, thank you very much). She smiled at me and I smiled at her, and that started…where are we now? 23 years of best friend bliss.

I don’t remember our friendship during first grade, because we had different teachers. I don’t know if we met up often during recess or not. I do remember I was thrilled to find that Christy was in my second grade class the next year, taught by my mother. We sat next to each other in the front row. I remember the first time Christy called me and our mothers talked and agreed we could have our first sleepover at Christy’s house.

After that, if I didn’t spend the weekend at my grandparents’, I was at Christy’s house or she was at mine. She lived only a couple miles away, down a dirt road in a small house with both of her parents. Christy’s house was pretty magical to a couple of wildly imaginative kids – nestled between cow pastures, it was just acres and acres of woods. We would walk up and down the dirt road, sometimes to her aunt’s house to sit on the porch and drink tea, but mostly we got lost in the woods. We would spend all day weaving paths through the trees, balancing on the logs that fell over the creeks, and then panicking it when it started to get dark (we always found our way home). We stayed inside a lot, too, and built houses out of dining room chairs and big blankets in the middle of the living room. Her dad would patiently crane his neck to watch a John Wayne movie over our play area. Sometimes he would hook a little green wagon to the back of his tractor and take us on a ride through the fields (much easier than walking ourselves).

Once, we found some ants in her room and decided we would be smart and set a trap. We put a chocolate chip cookie in a plastic jewelry box and left it open on the windowsill. We went back later, planning to just close the jewelry box, but I’m not sure we thought far enough ahead- the ants were EVERYWHERE and we were both completely unwilling to get close enough to even touch the box – not that we could even see it underneath the ants. We squealed for her daddy and Mr. Roger just laughed at us and scooped the whole thing up and threw it outside.

Another time we got a brilliant idea that we would put on pantyhose and short skirts, cover the kitchen floor in ice cubes, and “skate” as it melted. Instant ice skaters. Her mother (a saint, trust me), sat in the living room watching TV and we would call to her “Do you want a glass of water? Or a coke? Because if you want a coke, we’ll bring it to you! No need to come into the kitchen!” We eventually cleaned it up and went about our merry way. We were mischievous, but we were also good kids.

We mostly played house. We had teddy bear husbands and baby doll sons and daughters. I would bring over fake food and things like that and every weekend she would set up her house (in her closet) and I would set up my house (by the bed, underneath the air conditioner) and we would set up an elaborate story – almost always it was that we were long lost sisters and I happened to move in next door to her and we discovered our relations and everyone lived happily ever after (eating plastic supper).

We did the exact same things at my house, only our “houses” were in different places, or we would play with Barbies more (I had a dream home, two cars, and several Ken dolls, so I had the bedroom more suited to that game).

Friday nights meant Little Ceaser’s pepperoni pizza. Saturdays meant Nutty Buddys and Dorito Sandwiches. All washed down with lots and lots of Dr. Pepper.

Eventually elementary school turned into middle school and we were separated. We ended up in different schools in different parishes, and my family ended up moving about ten miles away – a continent compared to a child.

But we remained best friends. As we got older, we abandoned our games and started to do grown up stuff – shopping and going to the movies, that kind of thing. By the time we were teenagers, my parents both were away more with my dad’s job and her father had passed away and her mom worked nights, so we’d get together more at my house (brightly lit and with closer neighbors) and cook. We cooked a lot when we were teenagers for some reason. We watched Weird Science maybe every other weekend and would quote it constantly, doubling over with laughter. We started to date and so some weekends we didn’t see each other. We had made different friends at our different schools so we didn’t get to hang out as much or we would talk about things and people the other girl didn’t understand. I have no idea what Christy’s high school experience was like and she doesn’t know about mine – we had so much else in common (we knew each others extended families, grew up in the same small town, etc.) we just never really talked about school work and grades and things like that.

And then before I knew it, we were graduating (I barely squeaked by and ran out of my high school that night like a streak of lightening – right into Pam’s mom’s pool with a pitcher of pina coladas, if my memory serves me correctly, and she graduated valedictorian and ended her evening at a church potluck). She moved to go to LSU in Baton Rouge and I stayed put and went absolutely insane for the next few years. Her sister has a nice home in Baton Rouge, so Christy just moved down there. She did come back pretty often and when she did I would go over to her mom’s house and we started this kind of…well, it’s a tradition now – we would get together every time she was at home and play the newest Nancy Drew game. Christy is a HUGE Nancy Drew fan. She collects the old, original copies of the books and when they started coming out with computer games, her interest was piqued. She brought one home and started to play it and called me over – “you gotta come see this.” So that’s what took the place of playing house and Barbies and cooking.

Eventually she graduated college and she moved back. She married Jay, a boy I went to high school with (and cheated off of in Chemistry) and moved in right next door to her mama, right between those woods we used to explore. I spent several nights sobbing into the pillows on their couch, Jay standing awkwardly over us while Christy held me. I cried over all of my lost boyfriends on her couch (and one lost friend that was later patched up). When Jay was out of town I would spend the night on that same couch and we would eat Dorito sandwiches and watch Weird Science.

(On her wedding day, all of napkins were printed with “Today I marry my best friend.” After the ceremony, she tugged on my arm gently and pulled me to the side and said “Krista, it’s just a saying. You’re still my best friend.” That’s Christy.)

Then I got married and bought a house! And all of our childhood dreams came true – our husbands like each other, we live extremely close to one another, and we are still best friends.

She still comes over and I cook for her and she straightens up my house or I’ll go over to her house and we’ll walk around the woods if it’s not too dark. We go shopping together and get our nails done and we gossip and laugh and we still quote Weird Science. Every Wednesday we get together and play all of the old Nancy Drew games. If there’s a new game out, we bicker over who’s going to buy it (whoever does will find half of the cash shoved unceremoniously in some secret part of the house or car).

At this point in our friendship, I’m trying to convince her that she DOES want to start a family when she’s 30, just like we planned – husbands, houses, babies, all at the same time, all in a tight little circle of comfort and trust. Christy and Krista, still playing house.

ETA: this is in the wrong place, but I gotta add my favorite Christy story! Once we were driving around during our high school days and a certain song came on the radio...please tell me each and every one of you remember "How Do You Talk to an Angel" - by...who? Some guy on some TV show we never watched, yes? I turned to Christy, VERY, VERY SERIOUSLY (y'all would DIE if y'all saw my serious face, but she fell for it, whatever) and said "CHRISTY. How do you talk to an angel?" She thought about it for a second, and without taking her eyes off the road whispered, "Hi, Angel.")