Why Not Go Shopping?

by Melissa
(Vancouver, BC)

I ride a motorcycle, a big green behemoth of a bike, a little bigger than it should be. You can hear it coming for miles; he is a great green creature demanding attention. My best friend is a dainty, beautiful woman. She rode on my bike with me one time because her car broke down. She vowed she would die before she got on another, no matter whose bike it might be. We still manage to stay friends, maybe because we are so opposite and we balance out each other. It doesn’t matter how or why, she is my friend and I cherish her.

She has other friends, as do I. we do not have to spend every minute of every day together to know how much we love one another. We get together to talk about the stuff we have done- and what we plan to do. She wants me to do stuff with her and I want her to do stuff with me. But she won’t ride the bike nor will she learn how to ride her own and I just can’t figure out some of the things that she does either. And then one day she said, why don’t we just go shopping? We could wander around in a mall like we did when we were young, flirting with the guys, seeing how many free samples we could score and trying on shoes and clothes that we would either never afford or would never really consider. We would play a game like we did a million years ago: what would I wear if I were you. We pick out clothes for the other, not based on their own tastes but our own and then we laugh about the results.

We could go to an antique mall, meeting there, her in her little red sports car and me on my bike and wander around the old furniture and the things no one really knows about any more. There are a million places we can go to shop- and after all, we both like to do that.

Sometimes we invite other people, a few from her circle, a few from mine, and we see who clicks together and who does not. Sometimes we even watch as new deep friendships blossom and bloom. It is beautiful when that happens.

There we are, the biker and the delicate flower walking around the mall or the big box store or even the farmers market. We love the chances to bond over a little bit of retail fun. We do whatever we can to make sure that we have these times together frequently. We don’t want to be just the women who text one another every now and then- we want to actually make time to spend time. So we shop. We shop for nothing and for everything. I buy bike parts, she rolls her eyes. She buys some delicate blouse, I roll my eyes. We elbow each other out of the way for a pair of chocolate brown suede boots- and then laugh about how different and how similar we can be, all at the same time.