Courtney and Brenda

When I was 12 years old I was quote unquote dating this girl I went to school with, and our arrangement was actually quite inconvenient because her mom had a rule that she was not allowed to date anyone, which is a pretty reasonable rule to have for your 12-year-old. However, this meant that when I called her house, I had to assume the identity of a fabricated classmate of hers named Brenda. I would call and change my voice to sound girly, which was not a stretch as a 12-year-old. I probably sounded like a girl already and her mom probably just thought that Brenda was a cancer patient who was not doing so well. “Hiiiii, is Courtney home?” “Who this?” “Brendaaaaaa.” “Brenda?” “Yassss.” “All right. COURTNEY! Your weird friend Brenda is on the phone!” That is how the conversation went every single time. I don’t know why I went with the name Brenda either; I guess because it’s the female name that is most similar to my own name, which, to recap, is Ben.  I don’t know why this was the logic I went with, though. I could have gone with any name in the world. I could have even gone by her daughter’s name because there were like 15 Courtneys in our grade and they were all friends with each other. But I went with Brenda, which I guess means that I already had that name at the ready when I found out I had to pretend to be a girl. I don’t remember waltzing around our house pretending to be a girl named Brenda, but to be honest, my memory of being younger than 12 lies somewhere between hazy and nonexistent, which is weird considering the fact that I didn’t getting into drugs and alcohol until I was like 14.