BFFs and Tasmanian Devils

     There is nothing sweeter than watching your baby grow up and make friends.  No one will ever quite get you (or fight with you) like a childhood buddy.  I know this, because I met mine my sophomore year in high school and she was infinitely cooler than I was.  Tall, dark haired, and ragin’ against that machine with all the camo, doc martins, and teenage sneer-power she could muster.  She.  Was.  Awesome.  She gave me a Tolkien Calendar for Christmas that year and I knew we would be friends forever.  Not only had she braved the nerdy side of the bookstore to find said calendar but she hung out there as much as I did!  We liked the same music, hated the same cheerleaders, and were (mostly) blissfully unaware of exactly HOW awkward we both really were.  I had never met anyone like her.  She accepted me in all my painfully dorky glory… and would walk beside me down the hall even when I wore my Jurassic Park tee-shirt.  Do you remember typing class?  We don't either (I still can't type without looking at the keyboard) because we spent it writing snarky poems (that’s right, I said poems) back and forth to each other for the entire class period.  She had class before me and would leave a disk (yeek!) hidden away under the desk for me to find the next class period.  We never used our real names, of course.  We even had symbols to go along with our carefully thought out pseudonyms.  She was a safe place in a world that didn't always seem so safe.

     We roomed together our Freshman year of college.  Bad.  Idea.  The masking tape line that ended up on the floor will live in infamy and, for the record, that funk we found under the mini-fridge… totally not my fault.  I followed the beer and the boys and she got way better grades than I did and then we changed schools…  Life took over and we had no choice but to ride the wave to stay afloat.  As time went on and we went our separate ways, I worried that we would forget each other.  Silly me.  I have always worried too much.  Even though hundreds of miles separate us and we are both now “adults”, (note the quotation marks.  I REFUSE to own up to being a grown-up) anytime we are on the phone or we get a quick face-to-face during the cluster that is the holidays, it is just like old times.  There we are, the same girls who wrote those terrible, TERRIBLE poems so, so long ago.  (Gawd, we are old.)  She is still a safe place.

      As I watched Sass ride his bike in the backyard with his BFF over the weekend, both of them wearing nothing by Spiderman tee-shirts, underwear, and shoes (Spiderman, of course), I wondered if he had found his safe place.  Now, I know he is only three, but the budding bromance between these two boys is wonderful and powerful and completely unstoppable.  Just like Spiderman.  They have a Superhero friendship that would blow your mind.  It certainly amazes the Mommies and has a ferocity that, at times, leaves me breathless.  There is even a little brother for Sprinkles to harass.  One day they will fall in love and our families will be joined…!!!!  *Ahem*  I am getting ahead of myself here…

     Anyhoo… here’s to childhood friendships.  Complete with whispered secrets and fights that would make a Tasmanian devil blanch in fear…  Here’s to the bond.  And a safe place….

"No!  It's my turn to ride the bike/ kick the ball/ wear the boots!"  ... really it could be anything