My Friend Rhonda

Probably gonna embarrass the both of us by doing this but I just feel the neeeed.

Was one of those weird situations where you meet and find out all the weird near misses and connections that preceded. Her father-in-law worked with my Dad for, like, a decade and we both worked at the same place at different times. Probably if we'd met then we wouldn't have been friends as the age difference was just enough that I'd be super lame. Well, lamer.

Anyway, I worked at Sears in Nanaimo, she worked at Sears in Victoria and her and her hubby Will were lucky enough to come move to Nanaimo. I know they've neeeeever regretted it. (Sarcasm)

I"m super awkward and I don't like stranger danger which is weird cos in the capacity of dealing with the public, I seem to be fine. I guess it's the threshold of meeting people in a personal sense, ie. coworkers, friends of friends, friends of boyfriend, etc. that makes me uncomfortable.

So my Dad told me, through the grapevine, that she was transferring to my store and he thought it was into my department. I'd just graduated high school the year before and was going through this weird time where I just mutually didn't see or hear from any of my old friends. I was kind of a hermit.

So I was sort of weirdly aflutter about meeting this new person who seemed to pop out of my family woodwork. I looked at the schedule and saw when she was coming in the first time, a few hours after I started. I was nervous cos, as I said, stranger danger.

Anyway, I was coming back from my break and putting my bag away and she arrived and I, because this is what I do, just burst out my salutation. Kind of like this.

(like the knee high socks, Rhonda?)

Maybe the same week or the same day or the same sentence, I don't remember which, I asked if she would like to hang out lol and she said yeah, sure. See? you had a chance to escape!

I found out she lived just down the road from me, even better. So we decided on going for a walk to get some tea/coffee. On the day, it was raining really really hard. Like, sideways stinging rain.  But I was game if she was and I guess she was cos we went anyway. Thus began a super extra trend of going for walks in stupid conditions.

I am really glad that she stuck it out cos who else would appreciate the finer nuances of saying gross words in gross voices? I think it happens every time we see each other. And the voice that other people assume is an accent.

When Rhonda told me she and Will were expecting I was SUPER excited. I won't deny it was a small part of why I moved back from Vancouver to Nanaimo, heh. Rhonda's pregnancy gave rise to an awesome practice that is buying a cheese pizza and putting as many toppings on it as possible.  She's a super pro at this game cos, like me, she likes to eat everything. Except cilantro.

Anyway. The point I'm trying to make is sometimes someone walks into your life and you're the better for it. I haven't held on to many friends but I'm really glad I've clung to this one. Thank you buddy, and thank you for still being my friend half a world away.

sniffle.

Mees you.