Sinister: salt and vinegar crisps, chocolate biscuits and fragile friendships?

[Sunny set]

When I was younger I didn't have many friends, and those friendships I had 
were fickle things that were made and broken between the bell for lunchtime.
As got  older I started to realise people who only wanted to talk to you 
because you had salt and vinegar  crisps in your packed lunch aren't really 
friends. I wanted people to talk to people who cared about the things I 
cared about. I started to make some real friends.

It was when I went away to university that I really started to make proper 
friends. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who didn't know that my dad was 
the sex ed teacher. (Nothing is more certain to make a shy young girl blush, 
than having to sit in a roomful of people while her dad talks about SEX!)

My family has a tradition when it comes to making friends. The idea is 
simple: making friends is difficult, so why complicate matters further by 
having to learn new names? Find people who have the same name as yourself  
and then just try to remember your own name. My dad is the expert at this, 
having 5 good friends all called Dave. My poor mum on the other hand has yet 
to find a single Wendy and has to make do with people with different names. 
She has coped admirably and calls people by any name that pops into her 
head.

Fate shone favourably upon me. After an emotional train journey spent 
struggling with bags I found myself alone in the kitchen of my new halls of 
residence. My mum, obviously realising the difficulty in finding one's name 
sake, had packed me off with a packet of chocolate biscuits to help break 
the ice and make friends. I was standing looking at them wondering where I 
should put them when in walked a fellow Rachel. We were destined to become 
friends.

Four years later, we sat on the beach, picking up pebbles giggling at the 
idea of her ever living in London, nervously promising that we would stay in 
touch.

A life time since the crisp based friendships I had once had but  I was 
scared. Friendships are fragile things aren't they?

Lately I am realising that they are not. People from my past who I thought 
would have forgotten me long ago  have reappeared. Friends I thought were 
gone from my life, are back, bringing a smile to my face. True friendship, 
isn't killed by little things like distance, or time.

In a day and a half, I will go to see my friend who I now can't imagine not 
living London.  I can't imagine that she would ever leave my life 
completely. And I can't imagine that there will ever be a time when I'm not 
so excited to see her. I mean she talks to me when I don't even have any 
crisps.

Take Care,
Rachel

_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
        +---+  Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list  +---+
     To send to the list mail sinister at missprint.org. To unsubscribe
     send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to
     majordomo at missprint.org.  WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister
 +-+       "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper           +-+
 +-+  "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+
 +-+    "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000     +-+
 +-+  "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000  +-+
 +-+  "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001   +-+
 +-+               Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa                 +-+
 +-+               Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut!                +-+
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+