Jodie + Jodie = Jodie

In a never ending universal conundrum it turns out that my name is Jodie. Surprising huh! I had a best friend at school called Jodie, I worked with a girl called Jodie, and I used to go to a restaurant on the other side of the planet with a girl called Jodie. And to bring it all back to date I have now ended up with a woman I now consider my sister who is strangely called Jodie. It’s enough to make you want to change your name or at least add an H to it.

So it seems that I never knew what happened to my school friend Jodie. I was recently asked if I could find one person from my past who would it be and in all consideration it would always be a resounding – Jodie. The answer is often met with a raised eyebrow whilst consideration is given to the fact that I am referring to myself in the third person and they leave my answer to contemplate the fact that I would like to meet myself in the past. Whilst this may or may not be plausible even to my level of strangeness I am certainly not willing to meet myself, future or past, and I will leave that to people who chew on tofu and rub themselves in patchouli oil. You see it goes a little something like this.

When you are odd you tend to meet up with odd or in fact team up with odd. This has been the story of my life, meet up with odd, become best friends with odd and stay odd forever. Of course there is little in the past to differentiate with my future in this regard and hence why I gravitated toward my best friend at high school Jodie, we were odd or at least I felt I was.

We loved all the same things and were virtually inseparable which suited me fine as I enjoyed her company during the darkest of years in my family life and what hell that was and became. Perhaps to this end she probably never knew that her friendship with me and the time we spent together away from my home in particular were some of the best of my teenage years. They were carefree and exploratory and never had to be explained and I never did. That is until it all came to a crashing end through no fault of my own or at least that was my perception of it. There is no need to loath you with the story of how it all came undone and I still find it hard to think about the night it all came apart but suffice to say that ultimately it ended my friendship with Jodie and a little piece of this Jodie also ended as well.

I was horrified at what occurred, I guess I still am even more than twenty years later some things just don’t really get better with time. I was embarrassed and knew things were irrevocably changed forever I wanted things to be different but they never were or could be. Of course I tried in vain to make the friendship work despite the very obvious fact that it was clear it couldn't but it plagued me. So from that time on one of the best friends that I had was gone and unfortunately for me it hurt a lot. I thought she was the coolest person I had ever known. She was one of a kind and I always felt second fiddle to her she knew the coolest clothes to wear and the latest next best thing but even if I felt she was cooler than me she never made me feel I wasn't cool like her, she always made me feel great about being me and I loved that. I always trailed and struggled with trying to be cool. Guess I am still trying. Aren't we all.

Memories are a grand pleasure of life and I often smile when I think of the times we spent together, doing the things “not normal” teenagers do. We loved boys and we listened to music, okay okay I loved Peter Kapusi she was smart enough to love all boys. We had sleep over’s and concocted great ideas to order home delivery pizza when it first got “invented” just to see which lovely boy would deliver it, umm a girl of course. Laugh! We damn near almost pissed our pants. We dreamt of nights spent with Pseudo Echo and watched every gore film we could get our hands on. We wore clothes that nobody else did, we had hairstyles that nobody else did and we certainly never ever ventured to listen to “their” music so trips to Disco City were executed to avoid anything untoward, we went to clubs that nobody else did and we did it all before anybody else did. I loved the fact that she was alternative and I hope she enjoyed this about me. I can still listen to certain music and remember what it felt like to be me back then. We spent hours planning out our attire for school dances and even more time analysing and picking apart the whole evening afterwards. We had mud fights and food fights and laughed ourselves into stupors and with the naivety of youth I never thought it would end. It did. It was sad and devastating.

I hope she has all the riches that one deserves from life and I know that she would never settle for a boring UN alternative life. I have travelled the globe and met thousands of people and I know that I will never meet another Jodie, when it comes to a childhood friend you never do, it’s just the way life is. I also know that she is the one person who might get a laugh out the fact that twenty years on, Peter Kapusi finally contacted me and he found me through this blog. I never would have thought that this blog could yield such a catch but after reading one line that I had randomly written bang there was the email from Peter Kapusi that I had waited a whole high school career for and nobody could have understood better or laughed along with me more at the irony than my dear friend Jodie.

So I am Jodie and I have a best friend called Jodie and I had a best friend called Jodie who may never know how much our friendship meant to me.