I always thought we’d take the entire ride together.  

I thought one of us would stand at the others grave and sob uncontrollable sobs of good-bye with a never-able-to-mend broken heart.

We’d been a girlfriend-pair for well over 50 years, almost joined at the hips…..two crazies, laughing and making fun of everything.

 

That’s how we made it; that’s how we got by…laughing.  

Laughing when we should have been crying and without each other, we would have been.  

Then…..When did it happen?

How did it happen?

And why did it have to?

I don’t know.

I can think back and remember the very first time I ever saw her, she was walking the high school hallways with a girlfriend. 

Her dark, short hair was combed behind her ears, short bangs across her forehead and freckles, wonderful freckles across her little turned- up nose.  

She was cute…..so cute, and somehow, for some reason I knew we were destined to be friends. 

One day after school, I headed for the pool and there she was, sitting on the floor, leaned up against the wall, waiting for her boyfriend on the swim team to finish practice. 

The same reason I was there…..different boyfriends!

And that was our beginning.  

We quickly went from two girls waiting for their swim-team boyfriends, to two girlfriends, to two very close bestie’s…..a word not yet created back then but that’s what we were.   

On week-ends, we went our separate ways on dates with our boyfriends.

But later we’d meet at one or the others house, hide-out in the bedroom, talk half the night, compare notes and giggle. 

And we’d laugh.  

We’d put our pillows over our heads so we couldn’t be heard and our  little beds would shake from the laughter.

What did we laugh at?  

Stupid, silly stuff that we made funny.  

And that was almost everything…..we made everything funny.

But, sometimes when one of our boyfriends would break our tender teenaged hearts, we’d cry first then talk it through but always in the end, we’d laugh.

Dumb guys!

Eventually we’d fall asleep to the sounds the 50’s and 60’s music coming from our little plastic radios and dream of romance, our boyfriends and the day when we’d be adults and escape from the crap in our young lives.  

Over time, we learned to trust each other enough to share our painful secrets, our teenage embarrassments…..our home lives. 

To the two of us, it seemed like everybody had TV-like moms, dads and homes. 

Everybody but us.

We had dysfunction before the word was invented.

And I guess that was a big reason why we clung to each other; the hell  we had in common at home. 

No Ozzie and Harriet, not even close.

I wonder if she remembers…………………….

The time late at night when we sat at the kitchen table, pretty much in the dark, drank water and pretended to be two drunks?  

I think about that now and realize how sad it was, it’s all we knew.  

But, we laughed.  

It’s how we got through.

We made fun of our realities.

I remember…………………….

a zillion times after spending a night at her house, stuffing our pockets with anything that looked good to eat from the kitchen, grabbing a couple cans of pop and we’d be on our way.  

We’d walk the couple of miles from one house to the other.

We’d plan dates with guys, practice what we were gonna say and then laugh all the way. 

Sometimes when we had a pack of cigarettes hidden under the bleachers, we’d stop for a puff. 

I wonder if she remembers……………………. 

the time I was waiting for her to come home from a date with a very popular, very cute high-school senior. 

He had a car!  

The very first thing she told me when she walked in with wide eyes was, “Oh my God, he’s got buttons on his radio that just go from one good station to another!” 

And I was amazed. 

“Wow!” 

(duh!)

I remember…………………….

how grateful I was the time one of the very cool high school guys called her to go on a tobogganing date and she said she couldn’t go unless he found a date for me also and…he did.

I wonder if she remembers…………………..

the time she told me that the same car parked behind her house late every night?

It became a mystery we decided to solve.

We made a plan and one night after they’d arrived, we crawled quietly and slowly along her upstairs outside patio with a flashlight. 

When we got to the edge, as far as we could go, we turned on the light and flashed it on them.

They were embracing in the front seat.

But, much to our confusion, it was girls…..two girls in a clinch.  

We looked at each other with question mark faces.  

What the heck?

They looked toward the light and we hurried back into the house.

We never saw them again. 

We were 14 & 15 years old.  

WHO was naive?

I remember…………………….

the night I confessed to her I’d gone a little past my limits with my boyfriend.

The very next night she had the same confession.

There were hundreds of late nighttime calls with blankets over our heads so we wouldn’t wake anyone.  

We’d sit on the floor, stretching the phone cord as far as possible and whisper, til either one of her parents appeared or til I heard my fathers car coming up the drive-way. 

There are three of us who I’m sure will NEVER forget the Thanksgiving dinner that turned into a disaster as her parents fought.

We didn’t know where to go…..we didn’t know what to do. 

Eventually it dawned on us to call an SOS to her boyfriend and he showed up within minutes. 

Her mom gathered the ends of the tablecloth, tied it all together with the Thanksgiving feast bulging in the middle and told us to get it out.

Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberries, rolls, beans, plates and silverware….. all of it…..OUT!

Between the three of us we quickly managed to get it all to the car, hot gravy spilling and smelling wonderful and we went to a nearby park.  

So, while all the normal families were sitting around a table giving thanks…..

three teen aged kids, on a cold November Thanksgiving Day, were sitting on top a park bench with the tablecloth untied and the feast before them.   

What did we do?  

We laughed as we pulled pieces from the turkey and dipped potatoes in the gravy but was it really that funny? 

I think back to that time now and I feel sad for those three kids.

She graduated a year before me, got a job and met new friends.

I missed her, I was lonely.

(MORE TO COME)