A long time ago I met a girl. It was a chance meeting, totally unexpected and brilliant.
We looked like two peas in a pod. I’m not sure if it was that that attracted us or just that we were two young women looking for a friend.
It was a big night out at the RSL. Our partners knew each other and, a far cry from two podded peas were they.
You know when you meet someone and you just click? Well, we clicked. We just downright clicked! In those days my drink of choice was drambuie on ice. I may have imbibed a little too much. There was talking, so much talking. There was dancing. Actually I’m not sure if there was dancing but I’m ninety nine percent sure there was. We loved to dance.
The night ends, we say our goodbyes, I’ve been invited to join her at softball training. I don’t play softball, actually I don’t play any sport.
The next day my partner and I are off to Sydney, the big smoke, a million miles from our small hometown of Moree, the bush some might say but not us, the bush to us was not our town, it was what lay beyond.
We left early in his yellow Sandman (that’s another story), I was not a well puppy, must have been something I ate! So many stops along the way, if only I’d been well enough to enjoy the trip.
I did enjoy the trip back home a few days later though. Our chores were done and I was admiring the perfect solitaire diamond sparkling on my ring finger. We were engaged (yep you got it, that’s another story).
A few days later and the softball practice is underway. We can see the players across the road from the house. I’m nervous, I was shy in those days. He encourages me but I’m reluctant, I can’t remember if he walked with me onto the playing field, but I do remember that she wore a red and white striped one shoulder strap top. And history was made, a friendship forged from that moment on.
We’ve shared a lifetime of the brightest joyous moments and the deepest darkest most heartbreaking ones. It’s been twelve months since we last saw each other, the last time we hugged and shared the ease of each other’s company. And forty six years have passed since we first met and still, she is ‘my forever friend’ we each have the necklace to prove it. Way before the already-forged two-half pendants of today.
Ours, gold and engraved, the words worn with age but the sentimant not. The sentiment has stood the test of time, it lives on, in us. We two ‘forever friends’.
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