Casey and I had officially been living in our new apartment for a full twenty-four hours when we decided it was time to stock the empty fridge and shelves with food. Visions of all four food groups bursting from every cupboard had us abandoning the unpacked boxes, still strewn in every hallway and pocket of our little apartment, and heading out to the grocery store.

Previous trips to this foreign establishment had only been to re-stock diminishing party munchies like chips or pop. But this monumental trip required the use of a buggy. We dropped the quarter in the cart and pulled it out like seasoned professionals.

Casey and I developed a system immediately. We started on the right hand side of the store, and thoroughly scrutinize each item, debating its importance.

“Kiwis?” I asked, fingering the small green object in my hand. “Do we need Kiwis?”

Casey grabbed a bag and tossed a handful in. “Definitely. Kiwis are an essential to every new home.” In the buggy they went. By the time we got to the second aisle, we decided to be more selective with our purchases. The buggy was already half full.

“Look!” I motioned to a shiny blue juice pitcher.

Casey eyed it sceptically, trying to be objective. “We do have three already… but then again, we did buy seven different fruit juices. We’ll need containers for them all.” In the new pitcher went, right beside the automatic egg cracker and strawberry pincers.

When our shopping was finally completed, we pushed our overloaded grocery cart well past the nine-items-or-less station and started loading our purchases on the conveyer belt. The saleslady smiled as she eyed our haul.

“New apartment?” She asked.

We were stunned. “Yeah, we just moved in yesterday. How did you know?”

She smiled knowingly while ringing up two different colours of Tidy Bowl. “You know you can never have too much milk or bread.”

Milk? Bread? We knew we forgot something. Casey dashed back to the appropriate aisles while I sat watching the register adding up the items. $140.00 … $180.00 …

Oh boy. Living on our own was going to be expensive.

The final tally came up to $240.00, but we were secure with the knowledge we would be eating well for many a day to come.

That’s if we could ever get our food home. The grocery stores had implemented a new ‘boxing system’ where you put all your stuff in old boxes as opposed to the convenient plastic bags that I’d fondly remembered. Case and I chose two of the biggest boxes available and started stacking our load in them. After stuffing the last can in the crowded carton, we then attempted to lift them.

Wasn’t gonna happen.

Unfortunately the world had to witness Casey and I leaving the market inches away from being on all fours, dragging our purchases out of the store like a train with Casey at one end pushing the box and me wheezing at the other ending tugging strenuously, all the time holding our heads (and butts) up high.

Such a shame that our fridge went on the fritz several days later and we had to toss pretty much all the cold goods in the garbage. But the good news is I still have stuff from that shopping trip. You never know when you need a good pair or strawberry pincers. I haven’t yet, 20 years later, but I’m sure I will. Someday.

“Let’s do it.”

At nineteen years old, Casey and I had just made the monumental decision to move in together. Having been best friends for the previous six years, we were confident that we would be capable of sharing the same sink. It would be convenient as well, as we had previously shared every moment of our lives together via the phone lines (this was the dark ages, before internet and cell phones), we would now just have to knock on the adjacent bedroom door. We were certain Bell would understand.

The decision to move out of my parent’s house was a bit scary, yet exhilarating. The first two-bedroom apartment we looked at we loved. Lots of sun for her plants, lots of walls to lean my guitars against and there were at least two tenants in the rundown building that we were sure weren’t drug dealers. Casey and I signed the lease feeling very mature and dignified. We probably lost that air once we walked out of the door to our first apartment and let out a shriek of joy that could have been mistaken for mating cheetahs.

We first had to cart all of Casey’s things from her existing apartment (which was tucked at the very far end of the hall, approximately 12 football fields in length, away from the elevator) into my compact – and I do stress compact – car. This ordeal took about three hundred trips and plenty of friendly advice:

“Case, do you really need those?” I’d asked gently, pointing to twenty-eight pairs of taupe shoes.

Then we had to transport all of my things from my parents’ house, after I had assessed the importance of each item. Casey was very helpful.

“Deb, do you really need those?” She’d query, indicating my ten year collection of Metal Edge magazines.

Then the last stage, merging both loads, and ensuring their safe arrival into the new apartment. Other wise know as the Hurricane Stage.

It’s staggering to realize, just how much stuff two teenage girls could accumulate. All you had to do was look at an item and one would know immediately to whom it belonged. If it was black and had something to do with music, it was mine. It was pastel and was either a plant or a shoe, it was Caseys’. We’d never really witnessed first hand how different our personalities were. Yet here it was spread out on our new dining room floor like a banner in front of us. ‘Two Contrasting Personalities – Approach With Caution’.

Fortunately, Casey and I beat the odds and proved to be very compatible. We must have been, as I sit and write this we have celebrated our (gasp) 20^th anniversary of friendship and moved on to accumulate more crap, adding husbands, kids and drug dealer-free homes along the way. That drab, shabby apartment holds a lot of memories.