My husband chides me for the fact that I have more than one best friend. He said I missed the point of the word best friend. Best means only one, the best among the rest. But I do have more than one best friend. I have three of them; for a while I thought I had considered more, but looking back I really just had three. I spoke about one several posts ago.
Anyway, I would like to write about my other best friend, my college roommate, my co-conspirator, my go-between. Today is her birthday (April 26) and I have not spoken to her in a very long time. You see, she’s back in Manila and I am here across the ocean from her. And the breakdown in our communication is due to my aversion to text and cellphones and her dislike of email/computer. Well maybe not dislike, she just doesn’t have enough time to log on what with two growing boys to occupy her time. I preferred to communicate via email because I sit infront of the computer 8 hours every day and I have to check my emails for work, it would not be difficult to sneak in an email or two her way. So there, we lost touch.
I met her when I moved to my second dormitory in my second year of college. A few months into the new semester, I arrived from school and I saw her with my roomies and we were introduced. My first impression was not all positive. I thought I had enough new friends for now and I was not eager to let another one in our newly created circle of friends. But as fate would have it, she stuck to our group primarily because one of us is from her hometown, her homies. I immediately realized we clicked. We started hanging out more just the two of us and we shared secrets and let each other in on our crushes. Thankfully, we have very different tastes in men. We ended up being each other’s go-between. Our conversations then were mostly one-sided; when it’s her turn she would tell me about how her day went and any progress report regarding her crush; on my turn to speak, I would not reply or comment on what she just blurted, instead I would go with my spiel about me, my day, my crush. What a way to conduct a conversation eh? Well, we listened intently on what each other was saying, we’re just too wrapped up in our individual news to bother piping in to what the other has said. We bonded inspite of these conversations, or is it because of this, who cares?
So here today, I missed her more. I missed her laughter and sense of humor. What mother would name her kids Choco and Milko without a sense of humor, tell me? I missed our times together. walking the length of Recto from Mendiola to Avenida on lazy Sunday afternoons. I missed wasting away precious times browsing at National Bookstore card section finding the funniest and weirdest cards. I missed going to the movies with her. Well, I missed every thing about her.
Nette, happy birthday. I’ll shoot you an email, but I am sure you’ll get it four months from now when you’ll open your computer and shoot me an email to greet me happy birthday. I love you BFF.
FRANKLY MY DEAR....... 