Memories pt. 2

From the time I was maybe 13, until shortly before I turned 16, my two best friends were Tara and Clara. The three of us were inseparable.

Let me tell you, I mourn that kind of closeness. I mourn it. We’re all too closed off from each other as adults. But when you’re a kid and a teenager, you give yourself completely to friendships, soul laid bare, and there’s a kind of pure, total acceptance that washes from them over to you covering even your darkest corners.

That’s the kind of friendship the three of us had.

This was in Prague, and we were all TCKs- third culture kids, meaning kids growing up in a foreign country, not quite fitting in with the natives, but not fitting in in our home countries either. We fit in anywhere and nowhere. We’re adaptable, we can navigate other cultures, our parents’ one included, and “pass” like a native, but really it’s not home. Nowhere is. It’s lonely, but other TCKs “get it.”

We were all TCKs, but from very different backgrounds. I was a missionary kid, Clara’s dad worked at the Spanish Embassy, and Tara’s dad was in the oil business.

Somehow, we were magic together. We called ourselves the “Curliest Things.” It made perfect sense to us at the time- curly meant wild and spontaneous, curly was unconstrained joy and mischief.

It came about somehow relating to hair. I believe we’d been talking about the beautiful, tightly coiled curly hair one of Clara’s darker skinned Spanish friends had. We just agreed completely that curly embodied free spirited perfection. It was like that elation Ramona felt when she “boinged” her classmate’s curls. Though we all three were straight-haired brunettes, we knew, in spirit, we were absolutely the Curliest Things. And we used the adjective “curly” freely to describe things that were just quintessentially…curly!

We also developed monikers and little mascots for ourselves. I was Snek, (pronounced shnek), which means snail in Czech. Something about the way a snail can hide but then poke its head out and be ridiculous just fit. Clara was Giga, pronounced yeed-dya with a heavy Castillian accent. I’m not sure if it was a real word, but for us it referred to a cute little hamster (pronounced khamstehr because..that’s how Clara said it with her accent). Tara was Chiquita Banana, pronounced in sing song Chiquita Ba-naaaa-nah! Chiquita Ba-naaaa-nah! Chiquita Ba-naaaa-nah! (yes three times, and it was from a commercial we thought was very “curly”).

We scribbled our little emblem all over our notebooks and papers at school. A snek, a giga, and a chiquita banana encircled by a ribbon of curls (think tight loops over and over encircling our little mascots).

Our language and interactions were a cultural mishmash. We kissed hello (Spain), some words we used in Spanish, Czech, or English, or with one of the above accents. We said “as well” constantly (Tara’s dad was British and they say that instead of “too” but also just kind of all the time as a filler).

And we slept over each other’s houses a lot. Laying snuggled in bed together giggling and talking late into the night is one of my favorite things to remember. I just remember that feeling of pure happiness and best friend closeness.

Sometimes only two of us could sleep over, and not all three. When it was just me and Tara, it was our normal, beautiful platonic best friends kind of snuggling in her bed until we fell asleep. But when I slept over Clara’s and it was just us, we would spoon tightly, and I remember how perfect she felt in a way that wasn’t completely platonic. It was very innocent, just feelings I didn’t really understand at first. But when we held each other it felt different than when I snuggled with Tara, and we curled our bodies around each other more sensually.

I did discover I was bisexual as a teen, but looking back I’ve always wondered if she was. Spanish people are very physically affectionate and it’s totally “straight” behavior for them, but when Clara and I were alone it always felt a little more. Maybe that was just the perception on my end though.

In any case, the Curliest Things marked the end of my childhood and the transition to the teen years. I will always miss the innocent mischief and perfect sisterhood we had together.