Tales of a Best Friend

I met my best friend Jamie when I was fourteen, and she was just shy of her eleventh birthday. At that time, I was just the annoying girlfriend of her older brother. However, little did we know, that out of that would come a friendship that would last over twenty years. In those twenty plus years, we have experienced many situations that we still find ourselves laughing at.

It’s hard to pick one story that stands out above the rest. There’s the time we had a slumber party and dressed up as Sonny and Cher and performed I Got You Babe. There are all of the sketches that we would write together involving melting snowmen, a man on a stretcher falling out of the ambulance, and the boy who got his hand stuck in a vending machine. Speaking of which, I still believe should go on paper, as it is gold.

We would go on walks a lot. We made it a winter tradition to walk wrapped in leather jackets, eating ice cream. Everybody would call us crazy, and they were probably right. When I got married, she was my maid of honor. We decided to rebel and drive two hours to the nearest shopping mall. This was a mall that I frequented with my grandparents when I was little. It seemed like a fun way to celebrate this new chapter in my life. To our surprise though, the mall wasn’t quite as big as I had expected. I think it took about fifteen minutes to walk through the entire thing.

There were our frequent Saturday trips to Wal-Mart, where we would look for cute guys while doing a little shopping along the way. Once, we even had a mini food fight in McDonalds. I was able to open up whenever we were together in a way that I was never able to by myself. I wasn’t shy with her, I was invincible.

So, what’s the absolute funniest story I have with my bestie? I would have to say it was during a field trip that we had with our church youth group. It was in the middle of July, and we were on our way home. Our teacher decided to stop by a McDonalds to get everyone ice cream. Everyone had gotten there’s except Jamie. Suddenly, the ice cream machine broke. I know, surprise.

It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, we could just stop at a gas station and get her something. But when we stopped at the store, their freezer was broken. Ok, that was a little odd. By then, Jamie really wanted her ice cream while she was watching the rest of us eating ours. We tried three more gas stations and a sonic, and yet, no ice cream to be had. Jamie was in tears at this point. Finally, we found a place that sold ice cream and she was happy again. We all broke into a round of applause. I love this story because it is a prime example of the luck we have, as well as hint to the popular conspiracy theory about McDonalds’ ice cream machines.

Jamie and I have been through a lot together. There have been times that we have fought like crazy. But at the end of the day, we really are like sisters. I look back at these moments as some of the best in my life, before bills and jobs and children. We were just kids having fun together and leaning on each other when needed. We have an ongoing joke that someday we will be like the Golden Girls, living together in a condo. I believe we will.