// My male counterpart turns twenty-one today.//

It’s unbelievable how much time has passed since we first met.

Way back in fifth grade, when our chairs weren’t bolted to our desks and our one teacher taught us everything from History to Math to English, and the most trivial thought we had was whether to play dodgeball or foursquare during recess, I met you, Ben.

Although we had a rough start with first impressions, we stepped over that negligible hurdle and we became good friends.  Sure, somebody else (Stacie) tethered us together but that’s not the point.  The point is that either one of us could have diverted from our group’s…scandalous conversations and one would’ve thought the other was gross for talking about condom balloons—but neither of us did.  We stayed, and it was the beginning of our mindsets developing in a similar way.

We entered middle school soon after, and we had a spell of separation for a moment.  You had a lunch group, and I had a lunch group.  Sixth grade, too, could’ve been the end of our friendship but nah.  We eventually started eating lunch together and hanging out again, outside our life science class.  Seventh grade we ate outside our English class, and eighth grade we migrated back to our science lunch spot.  And then middle school was over, and it was a re-run of who and where to eat lunch again.

Freshmen year of high school, despite our lost-at-sea looks, and after deciding who to have lunch with, we ate at this small, gray, plastic/rubber table outside in the quad.  Sophomore and Junior year, we somehow found refuge eating lunch in our biotechnology class, where we knowingly had bred fruit flies and melted down gels for electrophoresis experiments in the microwaves.  It certainly didn’t stop one of our friends from using one of the microwaves and also melting down her tupperware—got a crack out of that one, didn’t we?  Then our graduating year we finally got some sense to actually eat inside our school’s cafeteria (but only because another group invaded our lunch table outside).

Somewhere in between those lunches, we got irritated and annoyed with each other, laughed at and with each other, and vented to one another.  Sometime along the way we had become best friends.  We became neighbors who lived across the street from each other.  And all those years together, I’d like to think we know how the other thinks (i.e. innuendos), what the other person really means when they say things to de-dramatize the situation, and when to give the other person some space.  Also, I feel like we both know when the other person feels extremely awkward—but it’s okay!  It’s a comfortable awkward.

Twelve—if my is math right—years of friendship can do that to two people.

So imagine what it will be like in another twelve…and the years after that.  It warms my heart just thinking about how we will still best friends then.

So Happy 21st Birthday, Ben! <3

Love,
Monica/Monique/Monicaca  :)