Happy Birthday Kjell

July 31st, 1978… 33 years ago, my best friend entered the World.  It would be another 5 years before I actually met him and got to know him, but what followed was a good solid decade of friendship.  We had done so many things, that I could not possibly begin to recount it all now.  From nanaimo bars and sugar cookies at the bakery next to his parents store (he lived upstairs), to pretending that we were going to turn his Dad’s large cube van into a rocket, to using his Commodore 64 to code a laser so we could shock (he often referred to it as “zap”) his sister Kajsa (yeah, we were a little strange).  There were movies in Victoria, swimming at the Hotel (Marco Polo was a lot easier for us to win when we could team up and both see underwater), apple fights with the teenagers who lived behind his grandparents house, hockey games in the living room, and even a dart game that resulted in me being hit in the head by one.  We both had an obsession with He-Man (it was 1986, leave me alone), music, and computers.  He also had a small crush on my sister at the time, which was cool because he was already like my brother so what could go wrong from that?  Heh… memory flashback.  We (Kjell, myself, my sister Natalie, and her boyfriend at the time) had gone to a movie in Victoria… we were originally going to see King Kong Lives, but because Kjell and I were not yet old enough, we had to go see a different movie instead (Nat and her bf still went to King Kong, I believe).  After the movie, there was a race to the bus stop… if Kjell beat me, Natalie would give him a kiss.  Of course, I let him run ahead, and got to watch him blush as Natalie gave him a kiss on the cheek.  Stupid memory, but it’s the small ones that meant nothing at the time, that mean so much to me now. (more…)