Where's Trixi?

Trixi and I have been best friends since we beat the crap out of each other in first grade. Sometimes the strongest bonds start with the weakest of links.

My grandma gave me this wonderful present for my birthday. I have to laugh now when I think about how much I loved that thing. I wanted a dog. My dad was allergic. No dogs for me. Grandma bought me the next best thing. A toy dog with long silky hair, a comb and a radio in her belly. How I loved that dog. In a spectacular burst of creativity I named her Silky.

I took her to school for some reason. Maybe show and tell. I went to lunch and came back to find Silky was gone. I was devastated. My heart broke for the first time.

I went home crying. My parents were not sympathetic. I called Grandma and she commiserated but none of us had money to get a new doggie. I didn't really want one anyway, I wanted my Silky. I had made her fur shine by constantly brushing it and I would fall asleep listening to the pop music coming from her tummy.

That weekend I was walking down the street, pulling a stick behind me, listening to the rat a tat tat when i saw Trixi sitting on a swing brushing my dog. I think my brain melted down. I screamed "Mine!" and ran at her. Luckily I must have dropped the stick.

I knocked her off the swing and into the mud. She grunted with surprise then slugged me as hard as she could. My ear was bleeding but I didn't care. We didn't "fight like girls." We meant it. We wanted to eradicate each other. We fought to kill or possibly maim.

An older woman who was walking a dog that looked remarkably like Silky broke us up. She was appalled by our hoydenish behaviour. We weren't. We were waiting for her to leave so we could get right back to our battle. She was a wise woman. She stayed until we'd calmed down.

Silky was down in the mud. Her fur was a mess. Trixi picked her up and hugged her tight. She was a wreck. Cover with blood, both mine and hers, mud everywhere but she had a huge grin as she hugged Silky.

That just might have been the first time I did something totally unselfish that caused me pain. I said "Since you love Silky that much you can keep her."

"What?" Trixi looked at me like I was an insane slug.

"You can keep her," I said. I turned and started to walk back home.

"Dixie," she said, "Are you nuts?" I stiffened my shoulders and kept walking. I found an interesting rock and started kicking it ahead of me. I concentrated on keeping it in a straight line. "Wait up," she yelled.

I waited, not happy, dreading what my mother would say when she saw my clothes. Trixi thrust Silky into my arms. "Look at her," she said. "She's not yours. Your Silky has white feet. Mine has black."

She was quite right. This wasn't my Silky. I turned so red I burned all over. "I'm sorry," I said, refusing to look at her. I blindly held the dog out to her.

"That's okay," she said. "I would have done the same. We're meant to be best friends. We had the same dog with the same name and our names sound alike. We must have been friends in another lifetime. We were probably famous scientists. We can share Silky. "

"Dixie and Trixi. Blech," I said but she had my heart in her hand the moment she said another lifetime. I knew right then that we would have adventures and see and think things nobody else on earth could imagine.

It was her last adventure that has destroyed us both. No, I must think positively. Trixi was, is, all about PMA.