Upside Down

Caroline has to be the strangest person I know. The weirdest, the most bizarre, the most eccentric; they all mean the same thing, and they all represent her perfectly.

What she is doing right now is an example of how outlandish she is.

“Come on, Matthew, join me!”

“I don’t think so,” I reply. Caroline is hanging upside down, her knees hooked around the monkey bars at a children’s play equipment set. She’s going for the record of ‘longest time spent hanging upside down.’ I don’t even know if a record for that exists. And if it does, I’m guessing it belongs to some monk in Mongolia, who spent three years upside down in attempt to achieve self-actualisation. Caroline’s only been going for three minutes, and I think she’s already growing weary.

“Caroline,” I ask, because someone has to, “Have you even checked what the current world record is?”

“Uh, no,” she said, her voice a little strangled. Maybe hanging upside down messes up your vocal chords. That hypothetical monk in Mongolia probably couldn’t speak by the end of his world-record gaining adventure.

“How are you going to know when you break the record, then?” I scuff the tanbark underneath my feet. How is this stuff supposed to stop kids hurting themselves if they fall? It is made out of wood chips; small, pointy pieces of trees. I mean, really.

“Um…” she trails off, and I notice that her face is becoming increasingly red. “I guess I’ll just keep hanging until I fall off unconscious, and hopefully that will be enough.” Her blonde plaits hang down, brushing the ground, gathering dirt in their ends and sweeping like twin brooms.

I ‘hmm’ disapprovingly.

Caroline gives the impression of being younger than she actually is. Smaller too. In reality, she’s now an adult (at least according to bus drivers and movie cinemas) and is probably taller than me, as much as it pains my masculine pride to admit it. Having a best friend who is taller than you, who also happens to be a girl, is not exactly macho.

But she really is strange.

One time she went into McDonald’s and spent the whole day there trying to see how many individual sugar sachets she could discreetly steal. Eventually she had to leave because there were no more sugars left. Another time she built an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower using matchsticks, just for kicks. Yet another time she bought every flavour of ice cream she could from the local grocers, and then mixed them all together just to see what the finished product would taste like.

I was actually with her for that escapade. After buying the ice cream she carried it, along with a large bucket and a wooden spoon, into her backyard. I had followed warily. Into the bucket went huge scoops of every flavour; strawberry swirl, chocolate, butterscotch, cookies and cream, and more. It looked absolutely disgusting.

“This is going to taste foul,” I said, stating what I thought to be the obvious. Caroline just furrowed her brow, and stood to regard me, wiping her hands on her jeans, smearing them with streaks of the sweet, frozen dessert.

“No it won’t,” she had replied, so sure of her flavour-inventing abilities.

Once mixed and melted and re-frozen, when we could finally raise the concoction (with trembling fingertips, on my part) to our mouths, and taste it, I had been pleasantly surprised.

“Maybe all the grossness at being mixed just cancels out?” I suggested, but Caroline shook her head.

“No,” she said, “they just work well together, even if you wouldn’t expect them to. Kind if like us.”

That had been a little over a year ago, and the Caroline that was before me now (still upside down) had barely changed.

“Caroline?” I ask, “Are you feeling okay? You’re looking a little… flushed.” I tilt my head, trying to see her face in a more familiar position.

“I feel a little flushed,” she agrees, “but I’m alright.”

Actually, ‘flushed’ being used to describe Caroline at this very moment is the understatement of the century. Her face is a deep red, and I expect that any second her pores are about to start bleeding. Not a pretty sight to imagine, I know, but it’s true.

Caroline would probably think it was funny. Sometimes I don’t even know why we get along so well.

Her and I do make odd friends, even if I don’t realise it most of the time. She’s completely carefree and spontaneous, never afraid to try new things and not caring what other people think of her. I’m just sarcastic and cynical, always mocking and scornful, and constantly doubting humanity as a whole. We probably balance each other out. Without someone to tone down her more outrageous ideas, Caroline would probably end up killing herself, and without her to lighten my mood I’d have prematurely aged by now. I would have become the old man that I am on the inside, shaking my fist at kids and telling them to get off my lawn. Her random ideas keep me young.

Caroline doesn’t just do one-off crazy things, though. There are some character quirks that she repeats constantly. She organises her shoes in her cupboard by colour, and yet the rest of her clothing is rarely even on hangers. Every time she sees a phone number saying ‘call for more product information about,’ she has to ring. Every time you walk past a pay phone she checks whether anyone has left change behind. If they have, she takes it; and if they haven’t she pulls a five-cent coin out of her own pocket and puts it there.

Both of us are in college now, and that means ‘no uniform’ more than anything else; more than ‘new members of the opposite sex’, more than ‘scores that actually mean something’ and definitely more than ‘homework’. But Caroline wears her very own “school uniform” every day. She went to an op-shop before the new year started, and bought all the shapeless tartan skirts and itchy woollen jumpers that she could find, forming a collection of mixed uniforms. You’d be surprised at how angry this makes the other students, for seemingly no reason other than that it’s not what they expect. I’ve been approached countless times and asked about her uniform fetish. I usually reply that I think she’s trying to make a statement. Really I think it’s just that she knows she makes pleats look good.

I’m pulled out of my daydream, when Caroline suddenly lifts both hands up to her face, and groans. I move forward, unsure, but a second later her legs go loose and she falls the small distance from the horizontal pole to the ground. Luckily her neck is bent, so she lands on a combination of her back and shoulders, her head thankfully avoiding being smashed.

“Caroline,” I say urgently, and fall to my knees by her side. She’s on her back, though her hands are still covering her face. She doesn’t respond, and I reach out to prise her fingers away.

They don’t budge. For one awful second I think that perhaps she hit her face on the way down, and now her nose is broken, and forevermore she will look like a veteran footballer. However, a second later her hands are peeled away, and I’m greeted with her smiling face and laughing eyes.

“Gotcha,” she says, poking her tongue out, and unsteadily climbs to her feet. She shakes her head, clearing it.

“Whoa, it’s a good thing you didn’t try that, Matty. It’s a lot harder than it looks.”

I stand staring at her, mouth gaping.

“You are so evil,” I splutter at last, “you were trying to make me think you were seriously injured.”

“Duh,” she rolls her eyes. “A little slow on the uptake today, are you?”

I reach my hands out, as if to throttle her, but Caroline just grabs them between her own, clasping my fingers.

“Lets go swimming in the fountain,” she says, suddenly.

“The fountain? People throw beer bottles in there all the time. And throw in dirty socks. And throw up.”

She shrugs. “We can check it out, and see how dirty it is first, if you want.” Caroline starts to walk off, and I can do nothing but follow her. That’s just the dynamic of our relationship.

As I said, she has to be the strangest person I know.

But you have to love her for it.