My Wonderful Friend since childhood!

This is not my normal crazy story, its a trip down memory Lane for me.

At 3h24 this morning I received a sms from my dearest and most wonderful friend Brenda of 40 years.

A sms at that time of the morning does put me on red alert as we have all had the dreaded early morning phone call.

So I grab my glasses as I am not able to read without my trusty friends no matter how far I stretch my arm out to read. Obviously I need to grow longer arms. I have been told this happens to most people when they reach Forty - Their arms shrink!!! Ha ha. No what I mean is our sight gets worse from 40 years on wards.

Now my sweet friend who I have known since I was 6 advised me she is coming to South Africa in November. This is indeed good news and I have not see her for about 8 years.

The memories I have of this wonderful person are so vivid and so fresh, in fact, I have a lifelong reminder of just how much my friendship meant to Brenda.

We were 6 years old, and as all girls do, we bickered all the time, and my mother often used said we were like two like cats (I now know she was not being polite when she said that because in fact she wanted to call us something much worse!)

While playing over at Brenda’s house, we were being our wonderful innocent selves and for no reason what so ever, sweet blue eyes Lou with her angelic face and cupid mouth got a little upset with me. I really do not remember what I had done, so I had my little 6 year old tantrum in return and told her I was going home.

Blam! I felt this thud on my head, I am sure I saw stars and then a trickle of blood!!!! I screamed blue Bloody Murder and ran to Brenda’s mother in hysterics!

She was not impressed that I wanted to go home and hit me on the head with a garden rake..... Hence the scar on my eyebrow. Now in anyone’s language this may not be funny bit the reasoning behind it is silly in hind sight.

As Brenda explained it “You can’t go home; I don’t want you to go home, so I will hit you for 9 - unconscious - so you can’t go home! “

Oh we squabbled and through the years I am sure we drove our parents to drink with our bickering and our scheming on how we were going to take over the world. We remained true to our friendship and not much has changed when we do meet up again, the years that have passed have not affected our friendship and our commitment to the vows we made at age 6, to be Best Friends Forever.

Our Friendship has survived the distance between us, and I have not been hit on the head with a rake again!

We are now both moms of 20 plus year olds and we adore our children, but when we are together, we become those silly giggling teenagers who sat and discussed boys, and music and clothes and the possibility of DOING IT until all hours of the morning.

We reminisce about Midnight feasts which we planned with such detail, and dutifully woke up at midnight (so we thought - turned out that our parents simply woke us before they went to sleep, and we were none the wiser) ate our wonderful treats, Marmite sandwiches, cool drink and a few sweets if we had managed to keep them from our brothers.

What wonderful memories. As children we had the ability to turn some bales of cotton into these secret hidden caves. Where we would hide from our brothers and then get bored and go look for them, only to return to our "Secret" cave to find they had raided our little home and pantry ! We would try to hunt them down without any success. We never did find where their secret Cave was. I have a suspicion that they actually did not bother to have one, the simply waited to steal from us!

Being Brenda’s best friend at school was wonderful, EXCEPT, when there was mischief afoot, I would land up in trouble and be blamed for whatever the mischief was and Brenda, well sweet innocent, precious, blue eyed angel!; never once was scolded or punished because the teachers would say
“Oh Brenda would never do that, just look at the innocent Face and sweet mouth, no she would never do that!”

And poor me, I was born with a naughty cheeky face (So I have been told) would land up having to explain the damages or the events that had taken place and Lou was equally responsible!!!

I wouldn’t trade one minute of our friendship and cherish each any every memory, odd battle scar and photographs we may have of our childhood. Our friendship taught us that in times of the worst fears or trouble you can rely on your friend as she is more than likely in detention or worse jail with you! Saying

" Oh NO - who is going to phone our parents, but Hell that was fun!! Lets do it again!"