I met you 33 years ago. You had blonde hair and blue eyes. All 10 fingers and toes were there, a little strange, but there. Strange in the way that your toes looked just like your fingers and not like toes at all. Anyhoo, not an important detail! You looked nothing like your mom, or your sister, a little like your dad but not enough to get rid of the suspicion you've always had that you were actually stolen from a crib belonging to the Oppenheimers and taken home with this strange family. The fact that your mother cannot show you any photos of yourself when you were a baby makes you a suspicious little hobbit. “Lost in a lot of house moves” my arse! You were robbed!
You loved running and swimming, loved playing in the mud. You'd make capes with bath towels and run down the driveway fully expecting to take off! You never did take off. Grass burns hurt.
You got a sprinkling of freckles on your face. Your mothers fault, she left you in the sun on the beach one day until your nose burnt big blisters and the freckles got firmly set. She tells you they're cute. She sometimes also tells you it looks like someone held a sieve in front of your face and threw poo at you! Someone should call Child services on this woman... just saying!
We were fun back then, we were always up a tree or riding our bikes, and only occasionally would you have a mean streak in you and you'd fling me off my bike, or throw me down on the tar when I was sprinting. Bitch.
We won't even talk about the Great Chiken Pox debacle...
You started to grow up, I stopped running with you, stopped playing in the mud with you. Started to wish you were someone different, that you looked a little different. It was never good enough for me that you were healthy.
You had to be skinnier. You had to be prettier. Your hair never quite looked right, your bum was always too big, your hips too curvy. I hung around with you because I had to, but I always wished you would somehow get “better”.
I gave you bad things to drink, bad things to eat and expected you to still look great the next morning. Expected you to carry me through my day with a smile on your face. And you always did, regardless.
There were times when you got weak and sick, and for a change I was the one who held you up. I gave you medicine, looked after you, made sure no one ever saw you with snotcicles hanging off your nose.
When you were nursed back to health. I always became selfish again. I wanted to do what I wanted to. Eat what I wanted to. Not run or play with you when you wanted to.
You never had a choice really.
And yet through all these years, you have carried me around, strong and healthy. Never complaining.
You have been a great friend. And all I ever did was find things in you to be unhappy with. I've treated you terribly.
I love you and I'm sorry. I am so grateful to have you. You've been nothing but awesome since the day I was born.
P.S. Don't think I don't notice you eyeing out the “Emergency stop” button on the treadmill, I KNOW you want to push it when I'm doing 90km an hour and fling me arse first into the water cooler. But I'm on to you.
P.P.S It would be awesome if you could stop embarrassing me so much when we're trying to hula hoop. Just keep the bastard thing up. You do NOT have to look like you're having an epileptic fit every time I put one around your waist.
*puts tongue back in mouth*
Pulling faces isn't nice either...
...and I spend a lot of money trying to keep you wrinkle free!
