The President of ME?

Vashon Island

It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, that most romantic of the Hallmark occasions, and a good time to ponder the beauty of the most romantic bond of all: friendship. More specifically, best friendships, especially the girl buddy bonds we form in the first twelve years of our female lives.

Girl buddies. It’s an alliance - after the parent-child relationship - that acts as our greatest training ground for all future partnerships. Where we learn to size up the world by measuring it against the reflections of the person we’ve chosen as our first real mirror.

Our best buddies enter our lives initially through the filter of convenience - a next-door neighbor, a classmate, a cousin, possibly even a sibling.
As our worlds expand, they can come to us as peers willing to hold our secrets. Primarily, they arrive in our hearts and remain there because they pass the ultimate test: they accept and love us as we are. They challenge us to grow, and at the same time they hold dear what we’ve been.

The best of best buddyships are those that maintain the bond through our growing pains. They weather the storms of our experiments with life. They are the ones that wait out our ugly mistakes, knowing who we are at the core. With luck, they don’t fall into the social traps that tempt us with words like “bitch.”   They survive the insidious messages that suggest we are in competition with one another. They embrace the idea that we are all in this together, and that when the going gets tough we are the ones who will hold one another up.

Here’s to our best buddies, especially the ones we’ve had since we were kids.

My best buddy, since childhood, has been my sister Kristine. Each of us has had other “best friends” throughout life, but this friendship has trumped them all. Through our entire lives, people have mistaken us for twins. I think that dates back to the fact that our mother dressed us alike on many occasions (as was the fashion in that part of the 20^th century) and even though we rarely dress alike now (except when we accidentally show up in the same TPOM sweatshirts) people still assume the twin thing.

In honor of that lifelong alliance with my “twin” and best buddy Kristine, I am making it possible for all the best buddies - young and old - who come into my shop this month to dress alike. Buy one “Who Is The President of Me?” sweatshirt and your buddy can have a second one for $7. The two of you can divvy up the savings. Or, you can make it a gift - to your best buddy.

Happy Valentine’s / Girl Buddies Day!
















Enjoy this cyber tour of The President of ME:
http://vimeo.com/81122712