14 Years Strong

Marlena Sue.

This girl. I’ve been friends with her for two-thirds of my life. That’s crazy as I’m only 21 years old. For 14 years of my life, she’s had my heart. It all began in second grade when she was adopted. She began attending my school and we immediately bonded. Our daily lunch and recess consisted of all-of-those-awkward-things-that-young-kids-do-and-how-they-do-them moments. i.e.. letting Zack Kervin chase us around and us chasing him around in return… climbing the twisted green ladder structure… seeing how high we could monkey climb up the poles that held the swings together… playing red rover… we didn’t understand why Drew Grogan walked around the edge of the playground saying “choo-choo” as if he were a train… we all sat and clapped singing “We love Becka”… etc.. And then we entered third grade. The upperclassmen of elementary school. We could finally swing on the ‘S’ monkey bars… We stopped worrying about Drew and his “choo-chooing”… we didn’t chase after Zack anymore… we took up more ‘classy’ activities… ya know, like jumping rope to rhythms of Miss Mary Mack-Mack-Mack… all dressed in black-black-black.

As we continued to grow up

things changed

but no matter what, whenever we got together things were the same. 5th grade was fun. I will never forget that we were in band together… (she played the trombone and I played the flute).. I remember always looking back to make faces at her sitting next to Andrew Price and her cheeks would be so red from blowing out all of that air. We were also in the same class in 5th grade… Mrs. Judson. We had so much fun. That was the year we officially deemed ourselves Martii and Cartii. That year Marlena got glasses… and a hair cut. She had short hair and pink framed glasses. It all stemmed from the guys calling her “Marlena Sue Geeker”. We used to laugh and laugh and laugh. That was the year Andrew cut his hair and Chris K. fell in-love with Lena. We used to call Andrew Dinkel-Andrew Tinkel. In music class I’ll never forget Andrew cleaning out his recorder and a huge wad of spit/snot flew from the mouth of his recorder until the wall about 6 feet in front of us. Ohhh Mr. Giffin… I also remember when Mrs. Miller called Marlena and Andrew out in class for flirting.. that was awkward.. and when one day Brad Archer ran into the bathroom because he was sick. Mrs. Judson rewarded us with jollyranchers (probably the only nice thing she did for us that whole year) and Marlena choked on it. She went and got some water and then puked right by the door in the hallway. The little green jollyrancher, the culprit was just sitting there right in the middle.

The years continued to go on. As we began to attend Junior High and High School we stopped having classes together… but every summer we were still the same two innocent girls. We would walk to see each other everyday. We were pool rats at the local pool which we both worked at in high school. We have seen each other through everything. I just saw her last weekend:

I would be so lost without her. My stomach and cheeks always end up hurting from laughing so stinking hard. This is my best friend. And I think what really keeps us going is that we are authentic. I’m not afraid to hurt her feelings and she’s not afraid to hurt mine. Not in the sense of being mean.. but in the sense of being real with each other. We can ground each other when our heads are in the clouds and we also pull each other’s heads out of our asses when we need to. She’s been there for all of life’s moments.

She was there when my family fell a part.

She was there for the first heart break.

She was there when the unimaginable things happened.. but she understood because things happened to her too.

She was there when I moved and went to college.

She’s been there for everything.

She pushes me to be a better person and I love her so much for that.