my first lesson in upper canada

i am in the business of plunking myself down, making myself at home, overstaying my welcome and peacin' out when the goin's good.  my most recent adventure of doing this may be my last for the foreseeable future as it's time to go on home.  i swear to god i actually heard upper canada tell me to come, take my coat off, stay a while.  so i did.  and now it's time to go.

moving to the mainland is, in my self-respected opinion, a mandatory growing experience for any islander.  let's compare it to all the b'ys from toronto who go and live far away from home for a year in montreal  (i kid, i kid!).  seriously though, let's liken it to some novel about a coming-of-age experienced by traveling by foot abroad.  i recommend east coasters (i mean real east coasters - not BC-style east coast, aka: ontario) spend some time in this part of the world.  it's a different life far away from the calming effects of the ocean.  it's...well.  it's not a thing i can put my finger on it.  it's a million little things.

when i first moved here i met this girl.  now this girl is NOT from newfoundland.  this girl i'm talking about is literally the prototype female designed for the city, with this big exuberant personality and huge hand gestures and confidence just streaming out of her.  she was this girl who just encouraged you to want to be around her - life of the party, smart, witty, opinion on errverything - art, music, writing, the law, the weather, western, london, toronto, vacationing, traveling, family values, gay marriage...  she was absolutely awesome and i whole-heartedly hated her.  this opinionated tall blond is so cocky.  let's be real.  as if the city is so great.

then there was me - bubbly, polite "little emily".  meeting a million new people was my heaven, where i got to break out all my lines and my jokes and sell how great newfoundland is on everyone: yeah, i AM in fact from the iceberg viewing capital of the world, and you are SO welcome to come visit me next summer!  i can already tell we are basically best friends, it is soooo good to meet you.  i'm superflously excited on the most regular of days, let alone among all these new people.  day one of school meant no obligations, no schoolwork - basically just a huge meet and greet, huge party.  i was perceived as sweet and friendly and - let's be real - pretty best kind, and the tall blond from t-dot thought to herself, that girl is so fake.  nobody is so sweet and bubbly all the time.  what a poser.

...and so began our somewhat hostile and entirely artificial relationship.  oh we partied together.  we were facebook friends and we always included each other in the plans of what was going on.  we sized each other up cautiously, rolling our eyes at the others' mannerisms, consistently just thinking - cocky bittie, fake bittie.

finally, it was mid september.  there was a pub night.  after a few glasses of wine that cocky blond bombshell and i found ourselves together...and laughing...and talking...and agreeing.  agreeing on the whole works of it.  it's unclear who said it first now.  but you know what - now that i look back, i'm preeeeetty sure it was simultaneous: "i thought you were a huge [cocky/fake] bitch!"

CUE THE LOLz.

she told me - you know what, toronto is that great, is it cocky if it's true?.  i told her - i actually am this nice all the time.  we began to appreciate all the things that were weird and foreign about the other person - i was so confused to be at clubs without live music: if there was no band then what were we doing here?  she probably just bought me another shot of tequila and reassured me we'd have fun.

i made her shoot screech one time in an effort to make her an honorary newfie - our friendship was almost terminated on that basis.  many a distraught text message was sent begging for forgiveness for the worst flavour she was ever forced to experience.

we bitched and moaned our way through 1L, sat in real strong solidarity as people tried to pull course evaluations away from us as we told certain professors about their many failings.  we ate ourselves into nutella comas and pinky promised to never buy that deletable chocolately goodness ever again.  we messaged each other in shame every time we bought it afterwards.  we ranted about feminism and cried about our long distance relationships and questioned our life paths and drank so many glasses of wine.

two years after those first awkward and erroneous decisions about one another, she told me at the bar one night, "you know, you've got mad swagger for a newf".  i asked, "what's swagger?" - i may have known, but let's stay true to form here.

so the first deep lesson i learned when i moved to upper canada?  that person you look at on day one and you say - yes, you!  you are so like me!  it's me and you now!  that person might become the friend you have a nostalgic moment or two with here or there.  then there might be that person you look at and you think, how the hell did we wind up in the same place at the same time?  that person could have the potential to be your valentine's eve date two years later.

with these things there's no tellin', you just have to wait and see.  friendship is a beautiful and funny looking animal, unknown and perpetually surprising.  that was my first lesson in upper canada.