by Joan Hall

Created on: January 18, 2009

When I was a child, I never really had one best friend. I was a young girl living in a neighborhood full of boys. I was a tomboy and loved it. Being a tomboy is OK when you live and go to elementary school in a very small town with a population of about 500 people. The not-so-great side of our small town is that it did not have a high school so we were bussed to the nearest city with a high school. I went from having 25 students in my grade to having almost 500 students in my grade. To the kids who grew up in "the city" we were hicks from the small town. The city kids had easy access to shopping, movies, school events. We had to beg parents or older siblings for rides to go to movies or the nearest fast food joint or to catch a ride home if we wanted to stay after school to "hang out". After getting off the bus at Jr. High in the morning, I wouldn't see any of my friends again until the ride home. We didn't have classes or lunches together.

Little by little we all started branching out and started making new friends from the city. I was in the eight grade when I met my new best friend. We had a mutual friend, a boy, who had a crush on me. My new friend took it upon herself to play matchmaker for this boy and me. Over the years there were a lot of crushes and new boys to like but our friendship stayed solid. My friend understood that it was difficult for me to attend all the school events; my mom didn't drive and my dad owned his own business and just didn't have the time to play chauffer. We spent every minute we could together at school discussing classes, boys, our futures, boys, our families and boys. My friend helped me grow up in numerous ways. I grew up in a family that did not express our feeling much but my friend did her best to draw me out of my shell. She knew deep down, beneath the humor I used to hide my true feelings, there were a lot of emotions waiting to get out. Unfortunately, our friendship ended before she got to see that side of me.

Our junior year of high school things began to change. The boy she had been trying to set me up with finally had the courage to ask me out, so after all those years I felt obligated to date him. He was a very nice young man and we did date for a number of months but for me the spark just wasn't there. I have to admit I dated him longer than I should have, for the sake of my friend who had worked so hard for so long to get us together. Finally I had to break off the relationship. I think this was the beginning

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