Friends

When I think of childhood I automatically think of Wisconsin, and my home there. I remember in the summer when every day brought along a new adventure. I remember our neighbor’s just two houses down from us was where my best friend lived, Collette. We became instant friends, spending every waking moment together. We had the same Barbie toy laptops that we would sit and play on for hours on end. I remember running from the pool in her backyard, to my house for food and to run in the sprinklers, then running back over to her house to swim again. We had the best time in the summer. Chasing down the ice cream trucks and biking up to our elementary school where we would make up games and ride around until the sun went down. And sometimes one of our other friends Nichole who lived just down the street from us would join us. She was a little older than we were though, so she didn’t hang around us much. Instead, she hung around this boy that lived across the street from her named David. He was one of my brother’s best friends so he would always be at our house, which meant that a lot of the time, so was Nichole. One memory I have of her is when she invited me over to hang out and we hung out in her room and sang to the music playing out of her radio all afternoon. She acted so much more mature than Collette and she was so much fun to be around. She made you feel important when you were around her. She would tell me how annoying she found Collette to be and how I shouldn’t hang around her so much. For a little while I listened to her, and I only hung out with her and David. One day I told her I liked David, which didn’t sit well with her for some reason. She told me she liked him too and that she thinks he likes her back. I didn’t care that much about it because the fact was David probably did like her more. That fall David and I were invited to her birthday party and before I went over to her house I was supposed to go to David’s house and walk with him to her house, at least that’s what she told me. When I arrived at his house I heard laughter across the street and as I turned around I saw Nichole and David running into her house turning around and laughing at me. I knew she had told him I liked him. Embarrassed I went home. The next day I saw Collette outside playing on her Barbie laptop and I went over to her with mine and sat down next to her. She treated me like I had never left her. We were best friends until I moved away a couple years later. The day before I left I said goodbye to her, but that morning when I was leaving I felt like this may be the last time I ever see this house, or this neighbor hood, her house. I ran over to her front porch, set down my Barbie laptop and ran back to my house where just minutes later we pulled out of the drive way heading to Utah to start our new lives. Collette showed me what a real friend should act like and how you should treat your friends. From this memory, I realize that childhood experiences can impact how you deal with situations, for the rest of your life whether you notice it or not.