Friendship

December 10, 2014 by Elizabeth Melton Parsons 42 Comments

My friend called yesterday and wanted me to go Christmas shopping with her about fifty miles away. It was a cold, drizzly day with some snow predicted and I was feeling pretty blah. My first instinct was to say no. I said yes because even though I wasn’t in the mood for running in and out of stores in the cold, I was definitely and always in the mood for hanging out with her. We went and I’m glad. She shopped, I browsed. I spent not one penny. She even insisted on buying my lunch. Got to love a girl like that. lol…We had a wonderful time.

I remember being a little girl in Florida and having two best friends, both male. Although we were very different, we got along wonderfully and always had the best times together. One of my friends was a country boy from a very poor family–a stocky, sturdy little guy with black hair and blue eyes. The other lived in town and his parents were successful to say the least–he was slight, slim with blonde hair and brown eyes. I was somewhere in the middle, my parents were neither wealthy nor poor. Our different backgrounds simply made for a more interesting friendship. I loved these boys and thought we’d be friends forever.

Unfortunately one day, city boy decided I was his girlfriend. Country boy took exception to this and declared in no uncertain terms that I was in fact his girlfriend. I was eight years old and thought them both disgusting. I couldn’t imagine at that age having a ‘boyfriend’. To me having a boyfriend would be like my older sister and her beaus, holding hands, sneaking kisses. YUCK! So, I did the unthinkable. I laughed at them both.

This only made them both more determined to ‘win’ me. As if I were some prize in a turkey shoot. I thought it was hilarious and didn’t take either one of them seriously. For the most part their bickering was good natured and didn’t interfere with our friendship. But eventually it escalated into a huge argument and when I told them both to knock it off, they turned to me and demanded I choose one or the other. I insisted I liked them both the same, which was true. That’s when things got nasty and turned physical. Fist fighting, wrestling kind of nasty. I was appalled, although I was not opposed to a good fight. But these were my best friends and they acted as though they hated each other. I told them I never wanted to talk to either one again.

This stopped the fight, but with one last shove, they shouted they never wanted to talk to each other again. We all went our separate ways and I kept my word by never again speaking to them. Country boy’s mama told me she was sorry about what had happened because good friends were a gift to be cherished. The funny thing is, once I was out of the picture the boys made up and remained friends for as long as I knew them. The break up of that friendship still makes me sad and I’ve never forgotten what that lady said to me.

I’ve lost several good friends from accidents and illness and this makes me hold fast to the ones still in my life both online and off. I cherish them. Although we may have our ups and downs, I try to make sure nothing becomes so big as to cause a permanent break in our relationships. So cherish your friends and if you’ve had a break recently, I hope you can mend it. ❤