"The day I almost killed her"

Since this week is my birthday week, I have asked friends and family to write a blog post about me.  I gave creative license and was chuckling over them as they came in.  No, those aren't tears... I have something in my contacts!!  ;-)


My best friend has actually known me all my life...literally.  We share lineage as well as friendship.  Our fathers are brothers, the kind of brothers that make people do a double take and usually call them by the wrong name. We have walked over 30 years of miles together, and her post offering shows it.

Kay and I met shortly after she was born.  Kay likes to start her best relationships with animosity, and I was no exception.  In fact, I may have been the inception.  

In early pictures of us together, as babies, toddlers, little girls, it is fairly apparent we were placed near each other for the photo op and pretty much bolted away from each other after the picture was taken.  

My earliest impression of Kay was that she was very bossy.  In our teenage years, though, our mothers’ attempts to force us to spend time together greatly paid off.  Kay and I discovered we had more in common than we realized, and more than that, we just understood each other.  I was the person who benefited from this the most.  I didn’t have a lot of friends and she became the anchor I could always count on.  When we went to college and ended up sharing a room, our friendship was tested.  Our fights became legendary among our dorm mates.  But as it turned out, it only served to strengthen our friendship.  And we taught each other about relationships—fighting, compromising, making up, and general maintenance.  It was an advanced crash course that our husbands were unprepared to keep up with.   

I couldn’t even begin to list all the things I have learned from her, things about friendship, marriage, parenting, God, myself.  Kay has always, always been there for me.  I have shared more laughter through tears with her than anyone else in  my life. 

 But, aside from all the seriousness, on her birthday, I would like to share the memory of the day I almost killed her

.

I was driving (that was our first mistake).  Of course, we were racing some silly boys.  And, of course, I beat them.  But only because they actually slowed down to get on the exit ramp and I didn’t.  Thus, the car did a 180 on the clover-leaf exit ramp, nearly going off the road and careening down a steep slope back to the freeway.  But we came to a stop, facing the wrong direction on the exit ramp, and I braced myself for her to start telling me what a moron I was for trying to race another car and taking the exit so fast.  Instead, she looked at me and exclaimed, “That was fun!”

And THAT is why she’s my best friend.