What was the best part of your childhood?
We were true bush children. Wild. Every day was awesome.
I remember the first time that I saw one them, my wild girls. It remains one of my clearest childhood memories. It was my first day of grade one at a new school. My parents had just moved my brother, sister and me from one obscure part of town to another. I got off the school bus and there she was, K. Her long black hair was in high pigtails, she was wearing pink and she had recently lost one of her front teeth.
I don't remember a lot from that day or even that time in my life, but I do remember walking into my new class and seeing a line of alien kids gawking at me - Bobby, Kunal, Sean, Kyle. Those are the ones that I remember best. And then there was D. She was so quiet and when I look back at pictures of her from that year, you can see the quiet seeping out of her. I had no idea that she would be one of the most wild and loud people I would ever know.
My other two wild girls were younger and they would come later. T and N. I don't remember meeting them. I wish I did. They took our school bus so that meant they were in the club. We all lived out where the dirt road started - Up in the mountains, away from everyone in town. We were the outcasts. Just like that, we were friends and it would be a bond that would never really be broken. Who would have known that we would eventually hurt each other in ways that we couldn't come back from? I wish I had known.
I know for sure that one hates me, one probably doesn't think of me at all, one can't forgive me and one loves me still, but we have never been able to come back to each other. These statements are one of the great regrets of my life. These girls were the people who shaped me and our adventures taught me everything I know. Sometimes the lessons were really hard and sometimes they had us laughing so hard we could pee our pants.
I wonder what my life would have been like if we had never moved to Hydraulic Road. Who would I be if I had never known them?
