Like Riding A Bike...

The truth is, I didn't learn how to ride a bike until fifth grade.

I know! Crazy! It's ultra convenient, fun, and keeps you active, but no matter how many people introduced it to me or took painstaking attempts at trying to kindle a bond between us, bicycles and I were not friendly with one another.

Then one day while we were cleaning out the annex, I took out the bike, walked it up to the street, got up on it, and rode. No problem.

That, in a nutshell, is my friendship with Haley. Slow to start but impossible to forget.

Introduced at age 3. Mutual hatred until mid-middleschool, despite countless attempts to cozy us up to one another.

Then, one fateful Monday carpool with our neighbor Susan (oh, we're neighbors by the way), Haley Nelle and I finally clicked. Naturally, through bike riding. And we've been riding the same neighborhood pathway ever since.

I can't say our friendship has ever been anything short of extraordinarily strange, but I can say it is extraordinary.

High school for us was a literal version of a T-Swift song, "She wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts. She's cheer captain, and I'm on the bleachers." We didn't talk at school hardly at all. She the extreme extrovert, everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. I was introverted, booky (not to be confused with bookie), and had a presence very much felt wherever I went. Different. Perhaps bad different from one another, but we worked.

Mostly, our friendship is one of puzzles, bike rides, Walmart (RIP Reasor's Video), and the random soulful conversations that give relevance to the other seemingly depthless 98% of the time.

And, despite however far we go from one another, like if she ran off to China and I ran off to Northern Ireland, we still fit right back in to the flow of life together the second we both show up in Tulsa.

She's the best friend whose family sets a place for me at the dinner table if I happen to be there anywhere near that time (unannounced, of course), who searches through my pantry if she gets hungry during puzzle time, who knows my garage code and just shows up with a "hi family!" at any given hour and day, who keeps a toothbrush and contacts case at my house but assumes she gets choice pick of my clothes, and whose family isn't the lease surprised when I pop in at her house or family functions even when Hay is out of town. They just smile an hand me pie.

She gets me, differently. Like, her predictions of my relationships are always completely dead on, whether I agree with her at the time or not and she knows how I'll respond to things before I even know how I will sometimes--and why--and we live oddly parallel lives to one another right down to matching wasp stings one summer several towns and campsites apart.

Unlike Caity and Kira--whose friendships I value completely but also understand how they function really well--I don't understand or know how to communicate my friendship with Nelle. Each time I try, I totally fail and end up confusing (and concerning) my audience with our past adventures and mountains and valleys and total lack of emotionalism with one another.

For instance, at the end of one summer, she chest bumped me and said, "well. it's been real" just before we parted ways for multiple months. A different break, I don't even think we had a final goodbye. We're just not like that. But I live and laugh louder when Haley's around.

*Do not ever ask me to join you in (or tell you about) sledding, trampoline jumping, or riding down any hill of any size on a toy tractor.

All that to say, my favorite Chinese import was delivered to me via airmail last week, and we instantly fell back into "normal." Biking, Spades, ice cream, Walmart, Snow White puzzles, the works.

Who knows? Maybe I'll move to Denver with her after all. She's got 9 days in person to convince me.