Slice of Life Challenge - Day 2 - Childhood Friend

  

THANK YOU, Slicers, for such a warm welcome to SOLSC!!

  

In case this is your first time reading my slices, here is my focus for the challenge: my fifth graders and I are going to participate in the Slice of Life Challenge this month, and they're writing memoirs.  I thought I'd do the same kind of writing - memory writing - throughout the challenge.  My new writing idea/goal is to write an early chapter book series based around a character very much like me, so remembering my childhood stories is very important for that project.  I'm going to be writing around photographs and memorabilia.  Day 2:

 

 

     This is my childhood friend (I'm on the left with the knobby knees), Michele.  I lived in the country, so she was my only playmate besides my pets.  She lived across the street (which meant a good walk), and we spent HOURS playing together. When I was in kindergarten, my mom did her student teaching at the local prison (I know!), and Michele's mom would take care of me half a day and then get me on the bus at the end of her driveway (Michele went to another school).  It was like heaven - spending half the day with your best friend!  They had a huge, beautiful garden, and I can remember her mom asking us to help her shell peas and snap beans, gathered in a  big bowl.  We would sit on the back patio, every once in a while popping a fresh pea into our mouths.  So sweet, and delicious, it would POP in your mouth.  Yum.  My favorite lunch her mom would make was tomato soup with peanut butter and jelly on Ritz crackers.  I still consider that lunch comfort food.  While we did play indoors some - we loved Barbies - our most fun was outside.  She had a horse, too, and when we got older we were allowed to ride them down to some woods further down the street.  I remember getting home at dusk one evening and getting in big trouble with my dad!  He was so worried!  We would also skateboard down our street (keep in mind this is a country road, so no sidewalks) to a developing neighborhood about a mile away.  We rode bikes there, too.  I think about how today parents would never let kids do that, but then it was considered safe, and parents were happy to have us play outside.  We didn't wear a bunch of safety gear, either!  Somehow we survived. 

 

    

     This is us playing cowboys and Indians.  Clearly, we are cowboys, but unfortunately, we must have lost since our hands are tied up.  Ha.  We played all kinds of pretend scenario games out there.  Depending at which house we were, we'd call our parents BEGGING to be allowed to stay past our play time because we never wanted to stop.  Sometimes they'd acquiesce, and sometimes it was dinnertime, so we'd have to go home.  I can remember fighting at times too - the stamping the ground with a foot, pointing fingers, shouting kind of fights.  Things were said like, "I never want to see you again!" and we'd storm off in our separate directions, furiously fuming.  But the next day (or the next hour), all was forgiven.  We stayed fast friends until jr. high, when separate schools and separate friends pulled us apart.  It didn't end abruptly or badly, we just quietly drifted apart.  However, even through adulthood we would occasionally get together with our families and catch up with what was happening in our lives.  She lives far away now, and we're Christmas card friends, but those childhood days with her - catching fireflies, swimming in the pond, riding horses and bikes, playing Barbies, and eating tomato soup and bright green peas from the garden - will stay with me forever.