My best friend first saw me when I was 7.  I was sickly.  I weighed about 22 lbs and was in and out of the hospital, in the e.r. several times a week and getting shots 3 times a week.  I was allergic to most natural fibers so I wore odd clothes for the time.  I was tall for my age and skinny.   They thought that I was allergic to my hair, so it was cut short.  I was one odd duck on the playground.  I wasn't unpopular though.  I just looked weird but didn't get any heavy teasing.  I did get comments between other kids who frequently pointed me out to C. She thought I was the neatest thing in the world because she has this artistic bent.  She was born a rebel.  She was already a musician and just had an artistic, bohemian outlook on life.  She picked me as her friend.  However, she didn't have an opportunity to meet me until third grade when we were in homeroom together.  At recess, she immediately sought me out in 3rd grade.  We became like sisters.  For the next 19 years, we were very close.  I changed elementary schools in 5th grade but that did not diminish our friendship. It was not unusual for us to stay on the phone until 4 in the morning.  At the age of 10.  LOL  We saw each other on weekends.  We were back together in junior high.  We did not have the same classes though and we both had separate groups of friends.  However, we still did things together, called each other, etc.  We didn't have lunch or breaks together.  We went to separate colleges.  Our lives diverged.  My life became too hard and free time too little to maintain friendships.  I was working/studying all of the time.  She left town and was travelling.  Went to live in Canada for a while.  We found each other again 6  years ago when she briefly lived in the town I was living in.  It was as if no time had ever come between us.  We were just as close then as we were as kids.

I had great friends from the time I was 8 through high school. I was inordinately blessed with the quality of friends.  They were good people.  Smart, well-centered, kids with hard lives who made all the right choices.  When I was hospitalized at 17 for depression, I had a great support group.  My best friend was really there for me.  Normally kids who ended up in the loony bin got teased by other students but no one could tease me because my friends surrounded me when I returned to school.  They fought my battles for me at a time when I wasn't up to the task.  They built me up.  C was the greatest. 

Her mother was even better.  My childhood would have been far emptier if it had not been for her blessed mother.  Her mother was one of the few that did not resent my mother working.  Because my mother worked and she wasn't all that inclined, she didn't uphold her end of the parenting duties when it came to transporting us place to place.  C's mother never resented chauffering me with C to lots of fun things. She always made me feel very loved.  We went  to movies, the lake to fish, skateboarding, libraries, shopping in larger cities, swimming.  C and I flew kites, biked, climbed trees, skateboarded, read, cooked, explored music.  We were both nerds with lots of esoteric interests and most of our late night phone calls were about us sharing our current intellectual passions.  I went through this Plantagenet phase in high school and hilariously, she was in this anti-intellectual mode of wrestling.  She put up with my sermons on Richard III and I listened with rapture over her latest crush of a wrestler.  We were crazy and had a lot of fun and funny moments.   We both got our driver's license and C got a car.  Geesh, that was hilarious.  From that point on, our adventures progressed.  We drove all over the state doing crazy things. 

She and I know all of each other's embarrassing crushes.  She knows every boy that I adored.  Every musician I swooned over.  The teacher's I had crushes on.  I know hers.  We both liked some really odd guys.  Never bad oens but definitely some characters.

My haired turned curly and frizzy at 13.  I had had beautiful straight hair until then.  Everyone was horrified and thought that I had done something to it. It was just rabid hormones and some bad genes linked to my secondary sex characteristics.  My hair was very uncool.  Straight hair was the style then.  hated my hair.  I was so ashamed, that I stayed in my room except for school and doctors for the entire year of 8th grade.  C permed her hair to look just like mine.  Actually, hers looked worse.  She loved my hair.  No one else on the planet did.  People made fun of it.  My family was horrified. My mother spent a month's salary to have it straightened once.  My brothers did not want to be seen with me.  Boys were very cruel about it. Yet, C purposely wore her hair like mine.  LOL  THAT is friendship.

I met my best friend at the YMCA. Had I had my way though, we never would have met. I was working in the babysitting room. This was sort of like a nursery, where the moms would drop off their children to play while they went to exercise classes or swimming. Her son was not very well behaved and he would scare some of the younger children while he pretended to be the Incredible Hulk, flexing his little muscles and roaring as he pranced around the room. I tried to be very patient with him, to hug him when he'd let me and ask that he be a good little boy and to please not frighten the other children by roaring so loudly.

This mom was slow and always the last to pick up her child. At the time I didn't realize it was because she was legally blind and couldn't get around so well. After the other children had been picked up and her child and I were alone in the room I would stand by the dutch door watching for her. When I'd see her coming up the hallway I'd quickly grab my personal belongings, greet her and then leave as soon as she entered the room because my shift was then over. I didn't want to talk to know her, much less talk to her after her child had made my hours so difficult.

One day I had the sniffles and when she came to drop him off she handed me a thermos. In the thermos she told me was some tea and honey. We had never talked when she dropped her little boy off, she'd generally tell him to behave, wave hello to me and then head off to her class. But this day she came into the room, sat down next to me and we had a very nice conversation. She was a lovely woman and so pleasant to talk to. When she told me that her son loved to come to the babysitting room, but only when it was my shift I was surprised. She said he'd told her I was his favorite babysitter and that was why she was bringing me some tea, as a thank-you for takikng such good care of him.  I was very surprised to hear this but very happy that I'd never let my dismay at his behaviour show.

Is she my BFF, probably. But since she's now moved to another state we see each other very infrequently.

My husband is my best friend. He's in my heart, he's in my soul, he'll be my breath should I grow old, he is my lover, he's my best friend, he's in my soul.

Mar 26, 2009 -- 2:48PM, Ebon wrote:

Mine was my cat, Jelli. She was the only one who was always unexceptionaly pleased to see me. When I was stressed, she'd jump up on my lap and headbut my hands off the keyboard so I'd pet her. When I was down, she'd put her paws on my chest, reach up and bump noses with me. She died two weeks ago.

Oh, ((((( Ebon ))))) I'm so sorry about your loss. :(

Mar 24, 2009 -- 6:45PM, appy20 wrote:

My haired turned curly and frizzy at 13.  I had had beautiful straight hair until then.  Everyone was horrified and thought that I had done something to it. It was just rabid hormones and some bad genes linked to my secondary sex characteristics.  My hair was very uncool.  Straight hair was the style then.  hated my hair.  I was so ashamed, that I stayed in my room except for school and doctors for the entire year of 8th grade.  C permed her hair to look just like mine.  Actually, hers looked worse.  She loved my hair.  No one else on the planet did.  People made fun of it.  My family was horrified. My mother spent a month's salary to have it straightened once.  My brothers did not want to be seen with me.  Boys were very cruel about it. Yet, C purposely wore her hair like mine.  LOL  THAT is friendship.

Appy, great story..... and what a friend... :) I've always had curly hair too....very similar to that Greek actress who plays on CSI -- Melika M? 

I grew up HATING my curly hair..... especially during the Charilie's Angels era (the original series, not the movie now you know about how old I am :) ) I ruined my hair with a straight iron trying to achieve Jaclyn Smith's sleek waves, or Farrah Fawcett's feathered tresses....

When Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand's move....  The Way We Were was released... well, that movie released ME and my curls from bondage ....  Barbara Streisand's corkscrew ringlets were absolutely fabulous! No longer a slave to curlers, hot irons, chemical straighteners, or the blow dryer.