Confidently Awesome: Damn Fine Friendship

She slides the swim cap off of her head. Her damp light brown hair is cut in a bob that rests below her ears. She dangles thin, lanky arms with a sweeping reach to grab her beach towel that is lazily draped over the chain link fence. She stands on long muscular swimmers legs that hold a deep tan as she dries herself off and easily slips into perfectly fitted Teva sandals.

I met her just after my thirteenth birthday when I began to attend our shared summer camp. Since that moment she has been in my life. She has always been my friend yet, I do not remember meeting her. Her family has always been an extension of mine and she is more than a best friend. She is my sister.

"All the kids are in the dorms from General Swim. We better get to the chalet to take showers if we're going to make it to dinner on time," a wicked grin spreads across her face. She yells, "I'll race you," as she shoots out of the pool gate, leaving me to lock the gate of the pool. She scampers across the street, and scrambles up the outdoor, rusty, iron staircase. When she reaches the top of the stairs she rips her towel off in a pseudo striptease, waving it over her head, she yells "Yeah-ahhh!"

She turns her attention into the chalet. Yelling through the open door and down the hallway, "Hey you Bitches, I get dibs on the the next shower!" She hangs her towel over the deck's banister then disappears into the chalet followed by uproarious laughter.

She can be abrasively jovial. She is mischievous. She is wildly sensational. She exudes adventure. You can tell that whatever her plan is with the slightest twinkle in her eyes it is going to be righteous.

Together we have confiscated Cheetos. We have searched for bear towels. We have made "The Patented Ho-Catcher 2000." We sang songs as lullabies that were clearly not lullabies to 50 girls at summer camp. We stood with our arms around each other at an outdoor Counting Crows concert where it spontaneously rained throughout their performance of "Rain King." We have skinny dipped, or in my case chunky dunked. We have gone night skiing. We have hunted snipe. We have stayed in a hostel in the Appalachian Mountains - talk about terrifying. We have been OOTC, Out of the Circle, and she has tucked me into a drunken sleep on a Bud Light Mattress or two. She has held my hair back and reminded me of every drunken, asinine idea I attempted the night before. I can tell you a myriad of other stories and tidbits with the photographs to prove it all, but I will not implicate myself more than I already have.

Our friendship has lasted through always living at least five hours away from each other, being middle school pen pals - I still have those letters, high school, sporadic weekend visits, shopping trips on Forbes Aveunu, our Grandmothers lighting candles for our protection, spending summers together, cars breaking down on the interstate, colleges, transferring colleges across the country, her overseas adventure with college abroad, countless Mr. Wrongs, road trips, concerts, changing cities, and her spectacularly lively country RamCat wedding and marriage to her equally rambunctious, audacious, thrill-seeking husband. Our most recent reunion occurred this month when she and J2 secretly planned a hurried visit on a two-night stopover from a cross country drive. After seeing each other five years ago at her RamCat One Year Wedding Anniversary we were back together.

She is exactly as my memory holds her. One moment she debates the latest methods of pedagogy and in the next moment she is masterminding saving the world through activism and the benefits of recycling. Two minutes later she is proudly expressing herself in the lyrics of 1980's rock anthems at the top of her lungs. She lives in the moment and loves wholeheartedly.

This is Chelsea.

Although we rarely see each other, when we do, we pick up exactly where we left off. That is damn fine friendship.