LASTING FRIENDSHIPS FROM ACQUAINTANCE TO UN-DITCHABLE

Try and remember the first lasting friendships outside your family that left an impression on you; think of someone before first grade.

My early years were spent in a college town. My dad was a student with a wife, two kids, and another one born before he got his Bachelor’s.

We lived on a long street with other families with kids. The most memorable was a sixth grader named Jimmy. The kid was a giant compared to the rest of the pre-school crowd.

And he liked to show off his big kid skills. When we made rubber band guns, he showed up with the same thing but used inner tube strips. Getting hit by a rubber band stung, but the tube left a mark.

Besides making little kids cry, Jimmy also liked hitting a softball down the street gutter with a baseball bat. I remember seeing this big lunk of a kid outside our house while he took a big backswing and blast the ball down the street, then turned around and did the same the opposite direction.

He didn’t seem like someone who would make lasting friendships. Where were his big kid friends?

I looked for my older brother so we could watch together from the front room window, and spotted him out in the front yard.

Big Jimmy didn’t see him crawl out to the sidewalk to watch, didn’t see him lean over the curb for a better look. With one mighty backswing, Jimmy nailed my brother right in the head with his baseball bat.

My mom rushed out and gathered her boy up. Jimmy didn’t come by our house much after that, but he left an impression on me, along with a depression on my brother who found other ways to hit his head.

Lasting friendships grow year by year, from one fun and interesting experience to the next. The earlier they start, the more years to claim.

Lasting Friendships In The Neighborhood

I’ve met people similar to others I’ve known for years. I introduced them once and said, “We’ve known each other for years,” when it hasn’t even been a year. A certain comfort zone adds years.

What I learned about friendship before kindergarten has stayed with me.

The kid with a new toy can’t be trusted any more than Jimmy and his bat.

Bigger isn’t always better when I think of the rubber band guns and the inner tube gun. Ours were made of sticks and clothes pins; Jimmy’s was cut out of plywood in the shape of a sub-machine gun. We could barely aim ours, while Jimmy was a sniper with his.

A new kid moved to the neighborhood in the springtime. We played in the yard. One day he wanted to ride my brother’s tricycle when my brother wasn’t there. I said he could ride it, but only if I stood on the back.

I gave us a big push just as he pulled back on the handle bars and back deck trapped my big toe against the cement and cut it bad. It bled and bled while my mom taped about a box of bandaids to it.

It was still bleeding when my dad got home and fixed things up.

“Hold his on your toe and squeeze. It’s called direct pressure,” he said like a doctor.

“How did this happen?” he asked like a judge.