Friendship is a strange thing. I wonder where it comes from. Why do we need friends when we have family? Or maybe I should ask, why don’t family do as friends? Of course, you can be friends with your family, but it’s a different kind of thing, isn’t it? You have family from the start that you’re born into, from when you can’t remember because you’re too tiny. But you make friends along the way.
I’m sitting with Dixie at Knit ’n’ Knatter, and Uggs hasn’t yet arrived. She’s doing her cushion cover and she goes, ‘Jen …’ and something in her tone makes me fear the worst.
‘Dix …’ I say, with trepidation.
‘You know the Teen Factor X stuff?’
Oh NO, not that, I so don’t want to talk about that.* It was weeks ago now. But I’m expecting to be taken to task about what I did, so I brace myself.
‘Yeah …’
‘I know why you didn’t tell me.’
‘Oh! Yeah?’
‘I understand why you couldn’t.’
‘You do?’
‘Yeah. I would have made fun of you. But not because I don’t think you could have done it, more cos that’s what I do, that’s what I do when I don’t know what to do. I’m not very imaginative.’
‘Wow,’ I say.
‘I know!’ she says. ‘This is me being nearly as mature as Uggs is!’
We both cover our ears and shriek, ‘AAAAGGGHHHH!’ to maturity and how it might have infected us.
‘We’re THIRTEEN,’ I squeal. ‘TOO SOON.’
Which is when Uggs walks in. And without thinking, or asking why, he just joins in, puts his hands over his ears and goes, ‘AAAAAGGGHHHH!’ as well.
You have loyalty to family but also to friends. That’s what I was lacking when I hid my plans from Dixie. But it’s good that she could see why. I probably should have trusted her, though. I was a coward. We’ve both learned a lot about ourselves from this, I think.
She’s still going to mock me but at least now I know it’s meant with love, and a lot of carelessness. And she knows I’m over-sensitive and an eejit. Friends are just fiends with ‘r’ thrown into the mix – it’s a fine line between the two if you don’t respect that, I ponder to myself.
