You may have heard the saying that friends come into your life for either a reason, a season or a lifetime. For me this saying is a true one and my "OGBFF", Michele Suarez, is proof of that! She is undoubtedly here for a lifetime. I do not have a current photo of Michele because she is allergic to having her photo taken. I do, however, have many of us as teenagers but because of time restraints and the threat of death, I will keep those in the shoe boxes they are in!
Michele and I are total opposites. I am morning she is night. I'm more of a homebody she prefers a dance club. I will stop and chat with almost anyone while she gives off the "keep on moving" vibe. My closet contains clothes in every color of the rainbow, Michele's is predominately black. What we do have in common is our strong work ethic, deep love and connection to our parents and family, a healthy sense of self and devotion to friends. It doesn't matter if a week, a month or a year has passed since we last talked I know that if I called her up in the middle of the night and said, "I need you here" she would be here and I'd be on the next plane to Chicago if she said the same.
I met Michele when I transfered from Everglades Middle into Fort Lauderdale Christian in the 7th grade. I was a walking classic nerd. I wore floral print dresses and white knee socks while the other girls wore corduroys and Candies. Our class was a tiny class in a small school-we graduated 16 students in the class of '83! So our class was it's own clique filled with jocks, brains, alternatives, pretty girls, popular boys and yes, nerds! It was weird by today's norm, but we were all nice to each other. It was common to see the jocks and the brains together after school or the pretty girls with the stoners eating lunch together. This thinking is what put a nerd and an alternative girl together to form that lifelong friendship.
Growing up Michele and I were able to spend lots of time together in and out of school. Our parents were great about letting us hang out and hey, it
WAS the 70's, so we were allowed to have slumber parities, hang out without worrying about homework overload or teenager "to do" lists. We would talk about cute boys-Michele would roll her eyes when I talked about Leif Garrett and I had no idea who Syd Vicious was. We listened to music-Michele would gag when I put on my Bay City Rollers record and I wished she would turn down the volume on the Ramones. (We did watch the Moon Man landing on the first live broadcast of MTV together though) We went shopping, to the movies, our parents took us to fun destinations together. After high school we still hung out when we could but Michele took her adventures abroad and spent lots of time seeing the world. I could only keep up when she called or wrote. Michele was there when I got my divorce and was in the wedding party when Charles and I got married. We talk all the time and not much has changed-she gagged the other night when I said I liked Adam Lambert from Idol!
I got off the phone with Michele the other night and after she reminded me that she is the
original BFF, I decided to share a few stories about our adventures together. Over the years there have been many adventures and many of them are in my everyday storytelling repertoire and if you've hung out with me you may have heard one or two. In thinking of what I wanted the first "incredibly true adventure" to be I sat and wracked my brain. Some were not appropriate to share in a public forum...the garage door, the pinup, a knife at a concert, the late night school gym visit...the list goes on and on! I did come up with a great one to share...(PS-Michele if you are reading this and you see any mistakes or literary liberty feel free to correct me!! lol)
One afternoon Michele's mom asked if we would walk up to the grocery store and pick her up a few things she needed. This is South Florida in the summer. Needless to say it was hot outside and neither of us really wanted to go. But back in the day, neither of us would have given it a second thought about telling her mom this! We just took the list and the cash and off we went. We walked the neighborhood streets of Palm Aire Village up to the main road and then to the store. We got everything on the list which included a gallon of milk. After a few minutes that milk got heavy and Michele asked if I would carry it. I did and after a few more minutes that milk got heavy for me and I said that I didn't want to carry it either. We started fighting about carrying the milk. My major point being that it was milk for her mom, not mine and thus her responsibility to carry it. She said it was milk for dinner and since I was eating dinner at their house I needed to pitch in. No way! Neither of us wanted to carry that blasted milk plus all the other grocery bags too! The only reasonable thing we could see was to leave it. I cannot remember which one of us had the milk last but it went something like, "Well if you wont carry it, I'm just going to leave it here." "Fine. Leave it. I don't care." Away from that gallon of milk sitting in the middle of the sidewalk we walked. We walked away in stubborn silence. Walked back through the neighborhood streets back to their house. The house where Mrs. Suarez was waiting for that milk. The first thing she noticed was that we had forgotten the milk. I just stood there and looked at Michele waiting for her to fess up and tell her about the milk. She looked at me waiting for me to say something. Finally, Mrs. Suarez said (loudly) that she needed milk and we had to go back out. Silently we headed out the door, back to that milk, sitting on the sidewalk. The milk was sitting right were we left it. Without any thought as to the sun vs. milk safety issue we retrieved the milk and back home we headed. Only this time neither of us had to carry it 'cause on the way out of the house Michele had grabbed her little cousin, Scott, and asked if he wanted to take a walk with us!
