NaBloPoMo Day 4: What Time Is It?

SUMMERTIME!
I'm sitting in bed eating an icy pole right now, because Melbourne FINALLY caught up with the rest of Australia today and gave us a little bit of summer. The wonderful warmth as well as Louise's blog post earlier in the week has gotten me thinking a lot about summer, the oppressive heat is hard to forget and so I have some very clear memories of summers. For some reason one particular memory keeps popping into my head recently and though it has no particular relevance to anything I've decided to share it with you.

The summer of 2008 we had a mega heat wave. At least 4 days over 45 degrees. I dont know what I had been doing to stay alive for the first few days but on the fourth day Greta and Tess came over. Greta and I had already survived many summers like this together, but this was still early days of Tess and I's friendship. We'd been friends about a year but weren't very close yet, and i definitely had not been that sweaty in front of her before. The three of us sat on my couch trying to stay as far from each other's body heat as possible. We had the blinds closed in a feeble attempt at heat prevention, and we spent the whole afternoon sitting as still as possible, eating frozen grapes and watching Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. I dont think we even spoke. Heat waves like that generally end in a thunder storm and at some point in the afternoon the cool change we were so desperate for did finally arrive. We ran outside and were sprawled on the small patch of grass in my front yard, giddy with relief. Although rather than the storm we were dreaming of, the cool weather we were reveling in was closer to 30 degrees. The decision was made that at night we would go with our parents to the cinema, a classic hot day hideout. We saw a late showing of Benjamin Button, and the air conditioning broke 20 minutes into the 3 hour film. We were exhausted and delirious, and the end of the film brought Tess, Greta and I to tears, this was short lived however, as the credits rolled and it announced 'Based on a Short Story'. I don't think I've ever laughed harder in my life, we felt like we'd just experienced the longest thing of our entire lives and it made us crazed. The three of us sat laughing and laughing all the way through the credits.

I don't know if time has made me dramatic and nostalgic but in my mind that day was one of the turning points in our friendship, it felt like we'd survived something life threatening together and like fighting a mountain troll was something that you couldn't share without becoming friends.