Childhood friends….

I have many friends from my childhood, I have many I had lost contact with and I have been very lucky that due to Facebook I have been able to reconnect with many of these friends. I have one friend when we were younger I would write her several letters and she would be busy and not write back, so I would be funny and write saying I guess the friendship is over and I would get a letter back saying yeah I know I am bad….it was a running joke with us. To this day we still do it a little, email or texts she doesn’t answer and I will make some comment.

Then there are the friends that have been like family. Some I lost contact with and others we wrote at Christmas and went to wedding and showers but didn’t hang out. Now we are doing more things because we are on FB and can easily contact via FB or text. Then there are the ones that I lost contact with because I was embarrassed I think. Embarrassed due to the situations with my mom and my sister. Even embarrassed by my ex husband. I didn’t want to have to answer the question about my mom or my sister. I sort of just drifted away from these people. Having grown up and moved on with my life I have reconnected again with these people and yes we have talked about my mom and my sister and it has been fine.

Then there is my buddy, my big brother, ok my little girl school crush, Mike. He with his family….two brothers, lived by me, Mike was two years older, his brother Sam was my age and their little brother Brian was much younger, I think about 6 years younger. Not only were we neighbors but our fathers had the same first name and they worked for the same company. He had older siblings that each of his parents had brought to the marriage but they were hardly there and I really didn’t know them. Mike…well Mike was my buddy…they moved out of state after Mike finished 9th grade. Then a year later they moved back to California but to Camarillo. Over the years I had only seen Mike one other time, at his brother Sam’s wedding, otherwise I lost touch with them. I know for years my father and his parents exchanged Christmas cards but that stopped after a while. I have tried to find him or his brothers over the years. I have googled them, I have gone onto the high school websites looking for them, and I have looked on FB to no avail.

Well last week I decided to look on FB again and low and behold Mike was there, so was Sam and their mother. Well I put in an add request for all of them. I was so excited. Now, you know what friends you can tease and what friends you can’t. I got on line the next day and he hadn’t added me…what he had been on line…so I sent him a quick email…giving him a hard time, teasing him. He added me right away. We were talking on pictures and posts and …I had to open a chat. I think that was Friday night and I think we chatted for about an hr but it seemed like much longer. Saturday we chatted for I think almost 2 maybe 3 hrs and Sunday about an hr. We had lost of catching up and lots of reminiscing to do. We talked about my sister, we talked just a little about my mom but not a lot, we mostly talked about what we have been doing and what we remember. Man if his GI Joe and my Barbie could talk about all the fun we had together (get your minds out of the gutter…). We talked and talked. The trips to the corner store for snacks, the company picnics, the neighbors we remember, the trouble he and his brothers would get into, and the good they did…when Mike organized the whole neighborhood to clean up the house across the street where a man had hung himself and the house was for sale but no one took care of it.

He told me he told a co-worker he reconnected with a friend that he had known since 4th grade and the co-worker didn’t believe him. I told him that I had a crush on him growing up, he said he figured, he told me when he was in 6th grade he told one of his friends I was his girl friend, never knew that. This has been a blast this weekend catching up. I have had a huge grin just feeling so good about this.

Mike was always there for my sister and I. His freshman year of high school before they moved there was a huge riot at the school. I remember my sister telling the story about how she was in and area and running towards the fence but knew she would not be able to make it and out of no where she was over the fence, Mike had thrown her over the fence to safety. He was like the big brother watching out for us.

We talked about my house and things that happened there; he kept saying that I was the caretaker that Amy was the caretaker of it all. I had to tell him that my sister went around telling people that she did it all and that I sat in my room all the time. Mike’s comment….those that were truly there everyday so close…like him…knew the truth. That makes me feel so good.

Mike made the comment that he sometimes wonders what would have happened if they never moved. I knew what he meant by that and I had wondered a few times over the years. One thing I know for sure, Mike would have tried to rescue me, in some way shape or form he would have tried to rescue me from what was going on. The other thing was times when I felt like the ugly duckling that no one wanted, he would have made sure I didn’t feel that way. That’s what would have happened. I am sure Mike would have had a run in or two with my mother for things that were said or done being direct towards me, not that is would have made a difference, because it didn’t matter when my dad said anything.

Have I had other friends I have been excited about reconnecting with of course. Did I have other crushes on male friends growing up…of course. Mike however it just seemed different and special, maybe because even though he moved away it confirmed what I always knew he was always in my corner cheering me on. We will keep talking, we will keep catching up, and one of these days I will find my missing stack of pictures where I have a few of him and his brothers I can post. Eventually we will visit in person, either up here or I will drive down and meet his wonderful family, amazingly his wife says she remembers me from Sam’s wedding, wow I don’t know if I made a good or bad impression…hahaha…I do remember Mike being excited to introduce me to her.

You never know where life takes you and if you had asked me when Mike and his family moved away if I thought we would reconnect on some thing called the internet and some thing called Facebook, I would have told you, you were crazy. I mean really, Pong was high tech then.