6 Things Only Your Best Friend Can Say
My best friend A and I were a duo for years. Working together, going on vacation together, smoking together, exercising together, cooking together (she did, I watched admiringly while smoking under the extractor hood). It was even so bad that her children's father suspected us of having an affair at one point. Not very strange, because when he called, daughter D said that mom and May-Britt were still in bed.
This period is a bit quieter in our friendship. Her children are grown, mine are small, we live quite far apart and madame resides in Spain for a few months each year. But when we see each other again, we laugh within a minute. Until we pee our pants. She is the textbook example of the best friend who can say anything to you. Things that would make you seethe with anger with others. Here’s a selection of her quotes.
1. ‘The two backs’
I was quite thin for a while, because I was smoking and exercising. And a noodle soup with a Chokotoff for dessert I considered a proper meal. Anyway. My bust size was therefore not what it should be. ‘Turn around, will you,’ A said when she wanted to take a picture of me while I was lying on my beach chair, ‘otherwise I’ll just see your back again.’ For the record: I was lying on my back so you could definitely see my front. Then she kept going. ‘That you’ve never been approached by the circus: the woman with the two backs.’
2. ‘It smells like baby poop here.’
When I had just given birth, A drove from Amersfoort to Amsterdam a few times a week. Brewing Indonesian soup for breastfeeding under her arm and more handy things. ‘Boks (that’s what she calls me), it stinks terribly of baby poop in your house. You should open a window.’
3. ‘Don’t be so dramatic.’
I was going to Rome with my beloved for half a year and lamented that I would miss her so much. She responded with the line that I shouldn’t be so dramatic. The next day she had booked a ticket to come visit us.
4. ‘Wow, you dare!’
From the moment you vaguely think that you might possibly go into labor, you have to stop eating, you hear? The advice from my experienced friend A, because not only that baby comes out; everything that’s in there, I’ll just say. But when I was in labor, my sweetheart occasionally fed me a piece of gingerbread. When A walked in and found me in the bath (she would watch over my oldest daughter while I pushed the second one out through the tunnel), she looked at the edge of the bath, saw a half-nibbled piece of gingerbread and said: ‘Wow, you dare.’
5. ‘Your daughter doesn’t even know what beans are.’
My friend is quite the cook. The type that makes her own broth and then makes a ragout from it and even rolls a few croquettes herself. When my daughter was once at her place, she helped her shell beans. My daughter had never done that before. Yes, she would eat a bean with Stella (our nanny). My friend can tease me about that for months.
6. ‘If you can do it, it must be really easy.’
Once, yes yes a long time ago, I bought a fake tail. At a birthday, someone complimented me on it and said I had done it so well. I said it was very simple, but that person refused to believe it. My friend said: ‘Believe me, if it’s like that with May, then it’s really easy.’
I miss you, bokkie, shall we meet up again soon?
