I
met my best friend Barbara on the public bus that stopped
near our high school. Her parents
owned a new home a five minute walk from our own similar two level
house. Richmond
was an area with heavy winter
flooding, so we lived mostly on the upper floors of these buildings.
I
like to think we were sisters in
another life, because our friendship was calm, pleasant, and easy going
from the start. I
just always felt I could be myself
with her. We could sit for hours, without saying much, sharing homework,
or perusing fashion
magazines together.
What drew us together?
Barba's
father was a war veteran with
a serious ddrinking problem,
percisely, an alcoholic. My dad was quite promiscuous, a handomse man
who broke my mother's heart.
We were devoted to our mothers.
Barbara's mom, Betty, was like an aunt to me, with a colorful history of
her own.
her
wardrobe was full of the pretty
dresses my ownmom liked, full skirted dreses with tight bodices to show
off breast lines,
high heeled shoes, bits of fur on
cuff and collars. Betty too like May used expensive cosmetics and beauty
aids.
Searching
through the bathroom drawers, we
discvovered our first cellulite roller, these look exactly like rolling
pins for cookies
and pastries, except with hundreds
of rubble needles tr press out excessive fat. Betty also introduced me
to Clairol
Condition, the best hair condition,
that came in a large white cylindrical jar.
I liked Glamour Magazine for clothes
and hair styles, Barbara liked Mademoiselle, a little more sophisticated.
And of course, we liked boys, and had crushes on them.
Barbara comlaind about the
strictness of the instructions she had received a Catholic girls" school, a place that
may have had the name Little Flower somewhere in it.
ow
we were free to go to Ingledew's inthe Oakridge Shopping Mall, looking
for matching shoes and leather bags
on sale. Or down to Sears at the Richmond Shopping Centre, where we
saved money by buying
home sewing patterns, and choosing
fabrics of blue velveteen, or brown wide wale corduroy, or pale green
cotton sprigged with
tiny white flowers.
We
talked about boys, cosmetics, clothes, God, our parents, though not
in that order. We were Good Girls,
which meant we abstained from Sex, though we certainly wondered who was
not a Good Girl.
We did not need to use those words,
as peopel just knew.
Kids
did stupid things then. For example,
if we liked a boy, we called his
house, just to hear his voice, giggled, and then hung up the phone.
This was not stalking,
as our interests changed too
quickly.
Two
brothers who liked us once followed us with their father's car, and
this was not really stalking, as
they seemed too shy to approach us, and we knew they were harmless.
We
never had one date, the year that we
were fifteen. We never had one date, the next year. Finally, around
the time of
our graduation, we began to date. I
closed off my high school years by dating a very popular boy, who had
heard of my family's
orblems, through gossip spread by a
nurse at the local hospital.
This
first romance broke up, as after
months of dating, I did not want to
have full sex with him. He really loved me, but I was too dumb to figure
that out. Several
years later, I passed Doug on the
escalator at our local Bay Department Store, and we talked in a warm and
forgiving way.
The
endless beauty magazines Barbara and
I bought taught us quickly how to appeal to men on the outside, we
would need to live
a lot longer in the real world to
learn any truly useful tips concerning the uncertainties of the
male-female relationship.