Be careful what you wish for…

The last, oh, four or five times I’ve said, “Oh heck, I have to write a blog post,” my pal P.V. has jumped up and down and squealed, “Ooooh! Write it about MEEE!!!”

Well, P.V., you brought this on yourself.

The first thing to know about my friendship with P.V. is that there is a fairly significant age gap. I’m old enough to be her mother. Yes, it would have been a teenage pregnancy, but the fact remains that she is fifteen years my junior. She gets fractious when I refer to her as ‘the child’, but will then turn around when we’re buying snacks, pop something in the cart, and say, “Thanks MOM,” loudly enough for the rest of the store to hear.

And then I flick her on the noggin and tell her to get off my lawn.

The beauty of P.V. is also the thing I frequently want to strangle her for, and that is her eternal fucking optimism. She’s one of those gratingly positive and happy people. You know, the kind I eschew like the plague? Between us, at least, we make a whole person. Her saccharinity balances out my jaded bitterness and general disdain for the world at large. Almost.

“Okay, so, if she’s the kind of person who makes you come out in a rash, why the heck are you friends with her?”

Lemme tell you a story. Once upon a time, I went to tap class and had a tap teacher. A month later, that tap teacher got the boot, and P.V. got thrown to the wolves--the wolves being a class of bona fide adults she was expected to teach. (We’re not really that bad. Well, our language is. And we’re wildly inappropriate. But we’re grown ups. We’re allowed.) I honestly can’t remember what it was that got the two of us talking--she probably does, the weirdo--but something did, and apparently, as her delightful mother who works in the dance studio office told me the next week, P.V. found me completely and utterly fascinating.

I mean, she’s not wrong…

Anyway, somewhere between P.V.’s mom saying, “P.V., don’t be a creepy stalker,” and me feeling incredibly generous, P.V. and I started to spend more time together. Like, lots more. Like, she’s usually sprawled on my sofa every other Saturday afternoon.

She’s great company, really, even if she does have a relative inability to keep quiet for any extended period of time. She likes to bombard me with love and affirmations, which I’ll admit is good for me since I spend so much of my time vomiting up sentiments from the other end of the positivity spectrum. She’s an interesting human being, we have some common interests, and she thinks the sun shines out of my ass. Honestly it’s all very weird, but somehow it works. And, I’ve got a young mind to mold and/or corrupt as I see fit.

If you bet on corruption, you’re right.

Let’s face it--I’m a mediocre adult, so the best I can possibly be for her is the ‘yeah, maybe don’t do that’ example of how to be a grown up. The best I can do for her is validate her existence and her feelings and expose her to all the quality media that existed before she did. I made her suffer through all of Green Wing--both seasons and the special. I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to shove down her pretty little throat next, but I have several candidates, including Monty Python. When we’re together we do stupid things like go buy me pointe shoes and go adopt more rats. We eat far too much cheese. She asks eleventy-bajillion questions and I give completely not straightforward answers because I’m a jerk like that. What?

Things P.V. is good at: tap dancing, dancing in general, emotional intelligence, making you feel special, talking your ear off.

Things I am good at: rolling my eyes.

So, P.V., there you go. I’ve informed the world about you. You are the Frankie to my Grace, the Aziraphale to my Crowley, the Manny to my Bernard, and you’re only going to get one of those references because I’ve been cramming it into your clam-like ear for months now.

I love you, you strange little animal.