You know, besties are the best and I think it would be OK if my bestie found out today that I love her! I think she's the bestest best friend ever and I don't mind telling the world. Let's just do it. HEY WORLD, I love my best friend Jeannie! She and I have been really close since the very first minute we met in August 1977. Yes, I know, I forgot to mention that we are both immortal and we will always be hovering around the same age as when we first met. It is what it is, and maybe that's why we're so close today. Neither of us really gets any older.
So, I was at the high school and it was the very very first day of classes. We had been there the same week to pick up our schedules, but we didn't meet on that day. I was hanging with my brother I'm sure. He had been at the school a year before me, and actually, he's in her class, I'm not. I was supposed to graduate in 1980, but I decided to go ahead and skip my junior year and graduate in 1979. Jeannie and my brother are in the Class of '78. West is Best!! We know this to be a fact.
I was walking around the cafeteria on the first day of school with my best friend from junior high, her name is Jen, and she and I had been besties for about two or three years. She and I walked up to a table, then Jen decided to walk around with another friend Karen. Karen, as it turns out, was Jeannie's best friend for a few years. When Jen and Karen took off and left Jeannie and I sitting awkwardly at the same table, we had little to no choice but to at least talk to each other. I think I was the one wearing the Bee Gees t-shirt, I'm not sure, one of us was. She and I immediately struck up a conversation about the Bee Gees, and since she was a Barry fan and I was a Maurice fan, we hit it off. That was then, this is now.
A million years later, we're still besties, and let me tell you (without telling you too much) she and I have been to (oh a lot) a few concerts together. I think Andy Gibb was the first, and I think .38 Special may have been the last, but there were some 300 or so in the middle. She's still attending concerts. I only go if I can stand in the back and exit if I need to. She went recently with another friend to see Steely Dan, so that would have been really fun; if I could stand in the back and make an exit. She's right up front screaming and yelling, I'm in the back making sure no one comes in with bad intentions. See the difference? We're best friends for a reason.
She lets me drive. I don't complain about her being a vegetarian. She puts up with my "I was fired again" stories, and I know she's been at her one job since we met in high school, and I don't tease her about not taking change well. She was raised in a very proper and elite household (I think they had a maid), and I was raised in a mess of a place with humble beginnings and humble endings. She fusses with her hair and nails every week, and I cut mine - both. I cut my nails and my hair. I don't have time for that sort of girly thing. We both love animals, we both love OU football, we both hate Oklahoma State, and we both love chocolate.
Our friendship was tested and tested HARD when we went with her church on a canoe trip down the Arkansas River. What made me think I could row a few miles with her, I will never know. We capsized at least four times and lost literally everything we took with us, including the sunscreen, lip zinc, and money. If it wasn't for the fact that someone somewhere up the river was playing Saturday Night Live loudly - - we may have ended right there. I may have had to kill her. The Bee Gees SAVED US!! We have not gone anywhere in a boat since, and we won't.
Apart from saying she's the best and just having you accept that fact, I can tell you that when I moved away to Indiana we still kept in touch daily through Facebook, texting, and calling. It was as if we were still close. We've been through graduation, college, marriages, kids, now grandkids - - but we've not aged. It's just what it is folks, we don't get older. We stay so healthy, so happy, so wonderfully in shape, you really should see us. We're like something from the Twilight Zone, I swear. Well, whatever happens, know this; because my best friend in the whole wide world is born again, and I am born again, we're going to be best friends in ETERNITY too!! Oh my gosh! Can you imagine the concerts there? I will be upfront with her and not worry about a thing. THAT will be GLORIOUS!!
Happy 1874th birthday friend - - you rock!
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