TheBanyanTree: Old friends, part the first - the beginning.

[Laura]

I can't wait to tell you all about my meeting with an old friend.

She and I met, I think, in high school choir.  My best friend from
elementary school and I had both joined choir as freshmen.  (If that sounds
weird, remember I come from a poor Kentucky county.  Elementary school was
K-8, high school was 9-12.  The county had no middle schools or junior
highs.)  As we progressed through school, she took the track which
interested her, which was farming and agriculture.  Not my idea of a
lifestyle at the time.  I went the theatre and music track, so we sort of
diverged.  We had no classes together after she dropped choir, and we
started forming new friendships from our new groups of people.

I was a soprano, AW was an alto. But for some reason, we hit it off once we
talked.  I have no memory of our first meeting, or what we talked about, I
only remember that suddenly, she was my new best friend, and we spent all of
our non-class time together that we could.

I knew that she was incredibly smart and savvy, but sometimes she made
really bad choices.  I never berated her about them, but occasionally I
would say something like, "Oh, A---!" and she would hang her head and say,
"I know."  Then we would go on.  I knew I couldn't affect her choices, and
she knew I loved her in spite of, or maybe because of, the fact that she was
impulsive.  And we did love each other.

We did all the standard teenaged stuff together, plus some.  She had horses,
and we used to ride them full bore through the wild wooded areas around
where we lived.  All those areas are full of new homes and cultivated parks
now.  I'll never forget riding the horses through the Wendy's brand-new
drive-through window.  It was the first drive-through in town, and we had to
try it out.  The expression on the face of the guy in the window was
priceless.  :)

We had sleepovers, mostly at her house, because my mom did not approve of
her "wild" ways, and tried to discourage our friendship.  They lived in what
I remember as being a really old house, and the closet in her room was
huge.  She had her mattress on the floor of the closet, and when we had
sleepovers, we could close the door and have complete privacy.  I thought
that was so cool.  And her Mom would let her have the dog on the bed - that
was awesome!  My Mom wouldn't even let the dog in the house, much less on
the bed.

We rode our bikes everywhere.  Usually as fast as was physically possible.
We played handball together, violently.  If both of us weren't bruised and
battered, it wasn't a good game.  We would wrestle in my front yard.  One on
one side of the yard, the other on the other side, we would run at each
other and hit as hard as possible, to see who could knock who to the
ground.  That sounds worse than it was.  Both of us grew up with brothers
much older than ourselves, so we were used to rough physical play.  I can't
think of another girl who had that same kind of experience, who would play
rough like that.  We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  All the games and
'rasslin' matches and races always ended up with both of us on the ground,
gasping for breath, laughing.

When we weren't racing each other on the horses or bikes, we would ride
side-by-side, singing whatever song caught our fancy, usually in harmony.
(oooh.... memory flash-back!  One of the songs we sang over and over was
"show me the way to go home, bome, bome, bom'tired an I wanna go to bed,"  I
had forgotten that!)

She taught me how to play the guitar, if you can call making the chords and
strumming playing.  I was never very good, but that didn't really matter.
We had fun doing it.  We sang John Denver songs for hours.  She also taught
me a funny little nonsense song that had hand gestures to go along with it,
and we would sing that together and laugh hysterically.  (memory flash... I
think I still have the words for that song.  She wrote them down for me, and
I'm pretty sure I kept it all these years!  Now I have to go dig through the
garage for it. ... hold on... another flash... "...way down in Barcelona,
they fell into the foam-a, now this is all bologna, Pataruchi blow your
horn!")

After I graduated from high school, she still had one year to go, but we
decided to get out of our parent's houses and rent an apartment together.
She found a house on the main business street, basically right across from
where she worked, and not too far from where I would be going to school.  We
had the main floor.  I think there were other renters in the upstairs, but
here is where my memory fails me.  I know I had some kind of a job, because
I had money.  Not much, but enough to pay my part of the rent.  But the only
job I remember having at the time didn't start until later.  Memory is a
weird thing, ain't it?  Anyway, we moved in together.  It was so cool!  I
worked (somewhere), and she worked, but when we weren't working, we spent
most of our time together.

(Those of you with dirty minds can stop it.  We were best friends and we
loved each other, but not like "that".  She had boyfriends, I had
boyfriends, but there's nothing like a gal friend when you just want to hang
out and be yourself.)

Unfortunately, one late night, we made a really bad decision together.  We
got in a lot of trouble, and part of my punishment was to move out of the
house, back in with my parents.  I have no idea what happened to AW.  We
didn't see each other again until several years later, and it was an
uncomfortable encounter at a local park.  Neither of us quite knew what to
say to one another, so we didn't say much.  After that, I never saw her
again.

I grew up a lot that summer.  In spite of myself I managed to live through
the rest of my teen years, get decent grades in college, and get a steady
job working with some wonderful people.  I matured, and started thinking
about the future.  One of the people I worked with set me up with another
friend of hers (we found out later it was a set up) and I ended up happily
married to an amazing, loving guy.  We went through the normal rough patches
all married couples go through, but we weathered ours, and we grew into a
permanently bonded couple, with two terrific kids. In fact, yesterday was
our 25th wedding anniversary.  I think we've done all right.

Every so often I would think about AW, and hope that she had gotten herself
together and was having a good life too.  I wished that I could contact her,
but had no idea how to go about it.  The house she had lived in disappeared,
and apartments sprang up where it used to be.  (I found out later that the
house is actually still there.  It's the office for the apartment complex.)
Still, I would hear a song and she would flash into my mind.  Or see kids
out riding horses, and think of her.  Every time two kids zoom past our
court on their bikes, she popped into my head.  It wasn't every day,
sometimes I would go months without thinking about her at all, but she was
always there, in the back of my mind.

One day a woman requested that I be her 'friend' on FaceBook.  I had never
heard of her.  She claimed to have gone to high school with me, but I didn't
remember her at all.  Apparently I have blocked most of high school out.
People often come up to me and say stuff like, "Oh, I remember you!  We went
to high school together!" and I have absolutely no memory of them
whatsoever.  Either I blocked it out, or I was the most narcissistic,
selfish, self centered person on the planet.  It's possible.

Anyway, I dug out the old yearbooks, and there was no one in the book by
that name, so I ignored her.  A few weeks later, she requested me again.
This time I looked her up by the second name she had listed, and there she
was.  Yeah, we went to school together, but I have no idea how we knew each
other.  She wasn't in choir, she wasn't in band, and I'm pretty sure I
didn't have any friends who weren't music geeks.  Still, I accepted her
invitation to be my 'friend'.

Within two hours of my acceptance I got a friend request from AH.  I had no
idea who that might be, but I opened it anyway.  There, in the profile
picture, was AW!!  She had matured, and her hair was cut short, but I knew
her instantly.  She had seen my name on the other woman's profile.  Her
first sentence was something like, "You've probably forgotten me, but..."
Forgotten you?  Not bloody likely!!  I immediately responded, and we spent
the next three or four days messaging each other back and forth.  I was so
excited!

(to be continued...)

-- 
Laura
wolfljsh at gmail.com
http://wolfsinger.wordpress.com