BULLFROGS & BUTTERFLIES, THE KISSING GAME & A REAL-TIME CLIMACTIC PERFORMANCE OF JEN MOVING AWAY
Jen and I never really needed anyone else. We fit with each other. We normalized each others weirdness. A lot of people search their entire lives for someone that ‘gets’ them. Jen and I met in grade 3, got each other off the bat and it never changed.
There was this game….this elementary school playground sport called ‘The Kissing Game’, where the girls would hide and the boys would run around looking for them and if they found them, they would kiss them. Now, Jen and I lived in our own world, finding full validation and assurance in our friendship and despite our weirdness, these two halves made a whole to the point that we didn’t even see how weird we were. We justified the belief that we would only add to the kissing game, how lucky they were to have us, and volunteered ourselves confidently. I remember that no one found us that day. In retrospect, no one looked for us is probably the more accurate statement.
The next day, we were told that the kissing game was cancelled and our new found whisper of an introduction into our sexuality was now over before it began. Truthfully they just moved their game to another part of the field thinking we wouldn’t notice. We did. We shrugged our shoulders and went back to playing Mississippi, skipping rope and our imaginary pets. We didn’t need the others.
Where Jen was, I didn’t need anyone else. It’s so rare to find someone that understands you more than you understand yourself half the time. Maybe we weren’t wanted for the kissing game because our classmates had recently witnessed our debut duo performance of the song ‘Diamond In The Rough’ from the children’s musical ‘Bullfrogs and Butterflies’; which featured Jen and I bouncing around like soggy amphibians and standing behind our performance 100% like we had just blown the world away with our Broadway level rendition of Les Miserables. A cheap blackboard chalk drawing of a diamond and a couple of young girls jumping around the classroom singing ‘Bullfrogs and Butterflies’ was our best performance to date and we were proud.
I remember the day that Jen called me to tell me that her dad had been transferred. They were moving away soon and she would live 8 hours away. We were in grade 5. A half of me was leaving. I even remember where I was standing when I got the call on our old rotary phone with the chord so long you could go upstairs and lock yourself in your room, often tangling someone else up in the process. As soon as I hung up, Shayne put on the Michael W. Smith cassette tape, landing on the song ‘Friends’ and turned it up, prodding my devastation and immediate breakdown.
Because Jen and I were natural born performers, we didn’t let an opportunity like her moving take away from what would be the greatest performance of our lifetime; a musical version we would write and execute of her moving away in real time, featuring and concluding with the broken hearted song ‘Friends’ from the day the news arrived.
We rehearsed and rehearsed and were so convinced that this performance would be wasted on our families alone, that we decided to invite our crushes. We took turns on the phone on each other’s behalf, selling the importance of their attendance and how epic this show was about to be and how much it meant to the other that they be there. Both Ted & Brent had, I’m certain; very convincing reasons for not being able to attend such a historic masterpiece, it would be their loss, so family it was.
It was the day of our show and we were all set up in my parents living room with the brown shag carpet; Mike and Madonna (Jen’s parents) as our special VIP guests who sweetly took time from packing their house to humour us - glancing back at the door hoping that Ted and Brent would miraculously appear to sweep us off our feet, when we realized that the tape we had with the song Friends had gone missing. I still to this day assume Shayne had something to do with it, but all we had left for the grand finale to sing along with was an outlandish collage remix of Friends with at least another four unrehearsed songs mixed in throughout.
The grand finale didn’t quite go as we hoped, shuffling and dancing around the living room with Jen knowing none of the lyrics to the last minute song replacement as she slowly mimed her walk up the stairs to the plane and dramatically mouthed ‘GOODBYE’, with an exaggerated royal wave before her final grand exit.
Although some might say that I should have been up for an Oscar due to my heavily emotionally charged performance, the tears were real that day.
And the next day, she was gone. My best friend attached at the hip. My equal in weirdness. The only person that’s ever REALLY ‘gotten me’ and just like that I went from a dreamer where the world was my oyster to a real average awkward grade 5 kid that truly didn’t fit anymore.
Enjoy ‘End Of The Road’ by Boyz II Men, best paired with being accepted for your truest self, singing at the top of your lungs and not feeling even one ounce of shame
