foibles and friends

(as told in a storytelling competition last summer)

In University, Imran was my best friend. You know how friends bring out the worst and best in people? Well, Imran was my best friend because he was best at bringing out my worst.

The other thing that brings out the best and worst in people is camping. Sharing a tent and communally making meals tells you a great deal about a person’s character.

So, one weekend after the not-very-bright idea of bringing Imran on a camping trip, and surviving the multitude of arguments that ensued -- on the long drive home on Highway 2 -- my other friend, Julia, and I shared the observation (out loud, of course, to Imran himself) that Imran was a closet chauvinist.

Imran’s response was a big, snorting guffaw.

“Look,” I said. “You’re Mr. City Boy who’s camped - maybe twice in your life - and yet, who insisted that they should build the fire?”

Campfires. Now, there’s another good personality test – right up there with Myers-Briggs. Julia and I had baptized Imran with his new name — Prometheus — after the first night for bestowing his gift of fire to us lowly girly-girls.

“As if you’re not a city girl,” he retorted. He picked on me, cause he he knew Julia was untouchable. She had grown up in Stettler.

My back stiffened. “I am not,” I defended myself. In the nineties, I was granola through and through — way before it was hip to be earthy.

“I’ve certainly spent a lot more time outdoors than you,” I said. Imran was not the tree-planter type. The man was an expert on color-coordination, lived on chocolate covered coffee beans and regularly called me up to say “need to cancel for tomorrow, gotta skip town, someone slashed my tires” or some variation on that. If anything, Imran was part of the brown mafia, but not the boyscouts.

He challenged me. “Oh yeah – and what kind of stuff have you done outdoors?”

I dove into the litany of the weekends I spent at my aunt’s cabin, picking saskatoon berries, going on tractor rides and catching toads so we could race them. I reviewed the camping and fishing trips with my family, squishing minnows onto fishhooks for bait, skipping rocks on the lake and burning my tongue with charred marshmellows. I was so-NOT a city girl.

“And?” he snapped. “A couple of days in the whole year. I say you’re still a city girl.”

I felt the blood rush to my ears. What kind of friend was this? Trying to tell me that he knew me better than myself?

(Of course, this is what real friends do, but I didn’t know that so early in my adult life.)

That’s when something inside me turned.

“I have a zoo degree, mister. I’ve had to climb trees, collect worms, and work my way through canola fields,” I pressed. He looked unimpressed. I clenched my teeth. “We even had to sleep overnight there.”

Julia piped up. “Canola?”

“Canola,” I said with finality.

“Oh, fine,” Imran said, defeat in his voice. “Sleeping in canola fields. I guess you’re not a city girl after all.”

“Thank you,” I said indignation vibrating in every part of me. And in no way, regretting that every word of the last sentence spoken from my lips had been a complete and utter lie.

I had wanted to climb up the trees, but my classmates insisted that I record the data. Sure, I collected worms – from my petri dish. And the canola field? Inspired by my view out the window.

It just took over me. I didn’t give it a second thought. The primal part of me (the part that felt five years old) wanted – no, needed – to win that argument. And it decided to disconnect my brain from my mouth and short-circuit it to something else.

Who said those words? I thought. And, then, it didn’t matter – it was eclipsed by the satisfaction of winning the argument.

It took a whole week to actually feel badly about the lie.

I confessed to Julia first.

“I was wondering about that,” she said. “Canola’s really itchy. I wasn’t sure how you could sleep there.”

Imran was not so forgiving. He wasn’t mad, just triumphant. And then, quite delighted to point out how, I – Roxanne – the Ms. Righteous Social Issues Activist — who sees the world in such clean lines of right and wrong -- had so easily descended into lying to win an argument.

The next couple of times we fought, he’d always counter with, “and how do I know you’re not lying about that?” … which lasted for about two years.

I’m not so harsh on liars anymore – politicians, movie stars, family and friends. There’s always popcorn gallery talk like “how could they lie like that??” and I’d respond with a simple “it happens.”

Who knows what “it” is… passion, fear, pride. The emotional prefix to a lie.

Sometimes, when I drive along Highway 2 and the bright shock of yellow canola fields break the monotony of green along the horizon, I remember my little indiscretion and I smile.

And, then, I always start to feel a little itchy.