Best friends forever? I think not.

  • Kindergarten: Some smallish hispanic kid, always up to no good. My doberman, Inga, bit him on the face when he snuck over the fence to check out her newborn puppies. I remember when we stole some of his older brother’s porno magazines. This brother used to make fireballs come out of his mouth using hairspray.
  • First Grade: Paul Link, red haired even with light reddish eye lashes. I remember he always had a flat top and identified himself as an ‘Aggie’ which meant absolutely nothing to me at the time.
  • Second grade: This is cloudy.
  • Third grade: My little brother, Scott. We lived out in the country so we had a lot of time to ourselves. We usually played with the Halverson’s, our next door neighbors, or the De La Rosa clan across the road. With 17 children and 16 grandchildren there was always someone to play with.
  • Fourth and Fifth grade: Sheldon Sugioka. He initiated me into the world of Tron and arcades. We pretended to throw frisbees like the people in Tron. He was very stoic but also very funny.
  • Sixth Grade: Daniel Rupley and then Chris Paek. Daniel was the other kid in my gym class who was exactly 4’11” and 76lbs just like me.
  • Seventh and Eighth Grade: Chris Paek. We always played this game of who could think up something to top the other person’s weapon. You know, I have a knife, you have a bat until at some point someone has nuclear weapons. We also got each other suspended on the last day of school in seventh grade when I ended up pushing him into a room divider during English class and then didn’t own up to starting it.
  • High school: I think in high school I was above identifying people as my best friend. Either that, or it’s too hard to figure out who beats out anyone else.

2 comments

  1. I ran into my fourth-grade best friend at UT a couple years ago. It was weird. She was friends with this guy I met through my feminist group. I went up to say hi to him as he was sitting in the Union with someone and when she looked up and we made eye contact we both recognized each other immediately and said hi. But we really couldn’t find much to say to each other. Once we’d established that our respective families were doing OK and all that we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. I got her phone number, but was too chicken to call and eventually lost it (and she probably changed phones anyway). It’s too bad. We were so close when we were younger.

  2. My best friend in kindergarten was a girl, I guess before the whole “When Harry Met Sally” rule against cross-gender best friendships kicked in. We lost touch in the first grade when she was in a different classroom. About 20 years or so later my sister claimed to have learned that my former best friend was working as a stripper and offered to put me in touch. I didn’t know what that was supposed to accomplish beyond embarassing me and amusing my sister, so I declined.