All my (Girl)friends are superheroes

Friends can be said to “fall in like” with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.  ~Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Like, schmike.  I love my girlfriends. I have the distinct privilege of knowing some of the most awesome, funny, considerate, knowledgeable, kind, creative and funky chicks this planet has to offer.

My gratitude for these women stems from the fact that I haven’t always had a stable full of dance partners, sob shoulders, conspirators, lunch mates, cocktail lovers, confidants, shrinks, inspiration-lenders, distress centre counselors, mama commiserators  and crazed fellow mischief-makers.  Truth be told, I lived through many a year without more than one good female friend, and thank Vishnu for her.  Now that my cup overfloweth, it’s high time to pay homage to these mistresses of happiness.

Let’s flip back about, erm, ahem, 30 years, to whitebread middle school.  Me and the rest of the pubescent crew were corralled in the gym, and our overly-made up and green body-suited excuse for a phys-ed teacher (she’ll have to have a future blog dedicated to her) instructed us to grab a partner.  In a giggling flurry that only 11-year-old girls hepped up on Lik-M-Aid and Judy Blume can produce, no less than five of my buddies hollered my name at the same time to pair up with them.   Now, I should point out that in no time of my life have I fit into the “popular girl” standard.  I got along, is all.  But at that moment I experienced such a surge of pure joy, I’ve never forgotten it.  Such affection coming my way, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my killer badminton overhand or spazzy tetherball technique that lured them; they simply liked me.  They really liked me.

Norma Rae moment aside, I didn’t have many female friends throughout my teens and twenties.  I can’t say exactly how it came about, but these Life things do.  No doubt I was partially to blame, because my erstwhile pal-potential hadn’t developed with the rest of me, and suddenly boys seemed so much more interesting somehow.  Harry Burns famously notoriously said, “Men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”  Yeah, well.  That may not stand true throughout our lives, but during our hormone-driven years it’s a pretty watertight theory.  Live and learn, live and learn.

By the time I hit thirty, I’d begun to rebuild.  Met new girlfriends, got back in touch with vintage ones.  Little by little, I began to reacquaint myself with the joys of female friendship, and you know what?  It was wonderful.  It was better than before, actually, because we had way more life experience to yak about over wine.  Then, at forty, a miraculous thing happened.  One of my friends whom I’d known since those gym days threw me a surprise Big 4-0 shindig.  My first-ever surprise birthday party.  It had all the elements:  conspiracy, awesome food, buckets of booze, a beautiful memory book she’d made just for me that brought on the boo-hoos something fierce, and the most awesome houseful of women to celebrate with.  Several were old friends, of course, but some I hadn’t seen in over twenty years; one had even driven for two hours to attend.  And they’d all come for my party, with good wishes and gifts.   I was transported.  I was liked. I was a beaming eleven-year-old, hearing my friends call out my name.

To all my superhero girlfriends, I’ll sign off with this quote from the film Norma Rae (Ritt, 1979):

“Thanks are in order. Thank you for your companionship, for your stamina, your horse sense, and a hundred and one laughs….what I’ve had from you has been sumptuous.”