When I was little all of my best friends were bound and made of chapters and print. The only thing that ever changed about them were perspectives that I brought to their pages, ( and maybe the water spots that sprouted in the margins when I dropped them into the bathtub). So I never had a best friend that moved away from me. My friends stayed on shelves where I put them.
I have one now. He’s moving February 6th… not that I’m counting the ( 29 ) days left. He went and found true love ( on Plenty of Fish because he was too “thrifty” to use a Pay for Play dating service). True Love and he are moving to Hawaii because they like to swim in warm water, something that I find ridiculous for several reasons. One….he’s not a fetus. It’s time to move on from that longing for a warm wet place. ( double e my friend, just for you). Two….if he just wants warm water, he can get into the bathtub and pee. No reason to move across an ocean to find that. Three…. nobody should swim in the ocean. There are sharks and seaweed, both potentially lethal and waiting and he’s too old to swim fast enough to get away from either. Even the seaweed. I’m trying to be supportive . Really , I am. Can you tell ? But if one more person says to me at work, ( we work together ), that this is going to be a hard adjustment for me, I will probably break down and cry. Why? Because I love him.I love him in a way that disproves the premise of When Harry Met Sally. Cliche as it sounds, he’s like the brother I never had. I see his face come to work ( in cutting edge trendy shirts made for bagging on) and I get happy….even on the roughest of work days. Not only does he know what I did last summer, he knows what I did last night before I even open my mouth. I excitedly share with him that I’m reading a self help book for the first time ever and he replies, “Why bother. You’re never going to change…” and follows up the comment with that smug self satisfied look that I know so well. Then he won’t let me take a picture of that s#$t eating grin because he knows that I will photoshop a fat animal’s body onto it and post it on facebook with a witty caption that he can almost but not quite understand. We eat lunch together and unabashedly steal from each other’s plates . I steal more then he does because his True Love is an amazing chef … and an amazing woman on top of that…talented, beautiful, brilliant and funny. When they first started dating, I gave it 4 months……because I knew him and his track record. Then I gave it 6 months and then 8 months. Then I saw him head over heels and I gave up and gave it forever. I think that I watched him grow this year and thinking about it makes me proud …and makes my thoughts wander towards Slim Fast commercials
Anyway…… he’s checked on me when sick or sad. He has waited hours for me to finish a 50 miler and drive my broken body home via several margaritas. He’s been an ear when I’ve needed one and a drinking buddy when I needed that. He’s not judgmental, not really. He does call me an asshole fairly frequently but not without just cause. Sometimes he shares him M and M’s. He’s pretend finished races in my bike yard when it was cordoned off with caution tape and we couldn’t stop ourselves from intoxicatedly recreating that moment of breaking the tape that never really happened for either of us. He points out my pimples and is forever staring at my haphazard part when I’m trying to have a serious conversation with him. For the longest time I thought that he had a walleye until he gleefully said, “no! it’s just that your part……it’s just a …….hair off.” He ridicules my dog . He points out that I’m not really a runner anymore. ( But then again….neither is he). He’s just a huge pain in my ass. Maybe that’s why he is going to leave a huge emptiness behind him. I’m going to visit them though. Just as soon as my family has a lice outbreak and I can smuggle some tiny livestock to Hawaii.
Confabulation 