mejor amigo

my best friend

I was 14 the summer of 1977,
one month shy of 15.
I had a chip on my shoulder and a soft heart, waiting. . .
for him.

I wasn't going to go to camp that summer. I can't remember why.
At the last minute I enrolled as a music camp student.
I knew most of the others, we had been going there together year after year.
We walked across the field towards the boy's side of the camp. . . and there he was, the boy I saw last winter at the youth day in Brantford!

He was tall and lanky with Bay City Rollers hair and beautiful blue eyes.
I had come to youth day in our church mini bus with Mrs. Howlett, our guardian, who had a habit of squeezing my ribs until they were blue and making me give speeches and sing solos. The day played out, i have no remembrance of the speech i gave, but i remember feeling so conspicuous at the podium wearing my cream, brown and turqouise velour turtleneck, i was having a bad hair day, i wondered if he noticed me? *he hadn't!! ha ha!*

I remember trying to stay in his sights, but not really succeeding. He was hanging out with the people in his band, talking and laughing.
We had to leave and I still made no connection. . i moped all the way home,
sitting in that bus with that bunch of twirps.

Now, here he was at camp, this was my chance!
Luckily I knew one of his friends and several of my friends knew his friends, perfect!
He turned out to be extremely shy
so I had to make the move, trying to pull the Levi tag off his jeans at the canteen one afternoon. *it was a popular thing in the mid 70s. . don't ask why* I didn't get his tag, but I got his attention. . I guess so! grabbing at a stranger's butt. From there we started to talk and laugh.

That evening we all hung out by the swingset next to the girls and boy's washrooms.
I told him that i thought i heard something in the bushes out back.
I wanted him to kiss me and I don't think it had occurred to him to do so.
So I showed him where it thought the 'noise' was coming from.
He looked at me and I looked at him and he suddenly got it.
We wandered down to the well next to my cabin and we sat and kissed.
Curfew sounded and we thought we'd better make a run for cabin check in.
He grabbed my hand to run together and I had this thrill in my heart i'd never felt before.
Magic.
That was it, I was smitten. . he was too, he told me later. . after an awkward morning at the flag pole where I was not looking at him and he thought I had changed my mind.
I just hated mornings and wasn't awake yet.
We spent the rest of the week hanging out as much as possible.
His cabin counselor saw us together the last day of camp, told us "It'll never last. Its a camp romance." I didn't believe him.
Time came to leave camp, I had no idea where he lived, whether i'd ever see him again. . he gave me his address, i gave him mine.
My parents took me home.
I cried the whole way.
He, as it turned out, slept all the way home.

How I could know after one short week that I would marry this boy?
But I did. I had no doubt. Didn't tell him for a long time though!
I told my girlfriend when I got back to school that September.
She thought I was ridiculous.

Today is our 28th wedding anniversary.
He still makes my heart jump.
I adore him.
32 years under our belt now.
I've lived with him 2 1/2 times longer than I had lived before meeting him.
the longer we are together, the more he means to me.
I guess you could call us oldly-weds. .
and sometimes it feels like a few decades have passed by,
other times it hardly feels like a few years.
I was never afraid for one minute to commit to marrying him.
We were just babies when we got married.
Our families, to their credit, never said we were too young.
They never said that we were crazy.
Maybe some people thought we were!! Okay, they probably DEFINITELY thought we were!! All I have to say about that is we outlasted a lot of them!


We've gone past buying 'things' for each other to mark this special day.
'I love you, so here. . here's some jewelry, here's some money.' That doesn't seem right. and we don't need to make the card companies any richer in order to tell each other 'I love you'. We can and do say that every day.
I feel like I was just a baby when I found this 'treasure' and i feel so rich knowing him.
This is a happy day. .