November 4th


My Best Friend

No photo today. My best friend is careful about what is posted about her family on the net & I respect that. 

We have been friends since Year 7 -- we think... We can't seem to remember exactly when we met, only that we ended up in the same classes in Year 8 & Year 9. Amazingly we were mostly allowed to sit together in class even though we spent a fair bit of time chatting - well it seemed that way anyway. Years later our English teacher told us she didn't mind that we talked because I would help my friend in class. What I didn't know (until much later) was that she hadn't learnt to read until she was in Year 4 & often struggled with it.

I still remember where we were when I told her & my other friends my family was moving away - in the upstairs corner of the library amongst the Asterix comics we would read each morning before school started. We stayed in contact though, writing letters, ringing & occasionally visiting.

During Year 8 we had been on an excursion that included a visit to Sydney University. While there we both decided we wanted to attend when we left school. As we both had been told we had learning difficulties earlier in our school careers it was a major achievement that we both got into teaching courses. I studied Home Economics Education, she studied Industrial Arts Education. And despite her failing our first year Education course, we both graduated at the same time.

Since uni we haven't been in regular contact, but when we did chat it was like we saw each other all the time, we'd just pick up where we left off. I married in 1996 & have since had 3 kids, she married in 1998 & has 2 girls. Until January we hadn't seen each other in real life since 1998. We both decided it was far too long & made the effort to meet one day when we were in the same area. And just last week I was in Sydney & rang her up at the last minute for a visit - we spent about 6 hours talking.

It has been awesome this year to finally catch up properly!! And we're definitely not leaving it 14 years to catch up ever again.




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