Childhood friends

Christina (this is where you met Christina) and I were inseparable in elementary school.  Her brother, Dave, and my brother were also best friends.  We spent all of our free time together, either at her house or mine.  Her parents were like second parents to me.  My house was like her second house.  Funny story: one night my family and I were sitting at the table eating supper when Christina's brother walked in.  He said hello, washed up, grabbed a plate, and sat down with us, and then filled- nay, heaped his plate with food.  No one batted an eyelash. This is what it was like.  My brother at the time was I think 15, so Dave would have been 16.  My mom was used to cooking for an army just to feed one teenage boy, so what's one more, right?  It just meant no leftovers for my brother to eat while he cleared the table.  Anyways, David finished his plate, gave my mom a kiss and said, "Sorry to eat and run.  Gotta get home for supper." You see?

In junior high, Christina's family moved away, but then her and Dave moved back to live with their dad when we were just starting senior high.  Sometime in the summer before 11th grade, she went from a chunky, kind of nerdy-looking girl to this smokin' hot blonde with big boobs and a slim but curvy body.  I am pretty sure she was the subject of many a jerk session for many a high school boy.  (Did I mention she was extremely smart? Yeah, she's a doctor now.) I would say I was a mite jealous, not of the male attention she received, but because she didn't really want to hang out with me anymore.  Perhaps it wasn't so much jealousy as hurt.  I can't really describe it, only to say we had one of those really tight we'llbebestfriendsforever friendships that girls have.. and then we didn't.  So really, I guess hurt describes it.  When we got to senior high school, she had a bunch of new and different, older friends who would take her to the bar on Friday night.  She had a boyfriend and hung around with him and his friends.  We still did stuff occasionally, it just wasn't as often.  After high school, she went to university and I went to work.  We traveled to California together once, for a week.  After the trip, we did keep in touch through letters, and saw each other once in a while. Eventually, our connection faded.  I would send her an email once in a while, I think she wrote me back once.  In a strange twist of fate, her dad died a week after my mom did.  I tried to get in touch with her after that but no response.

So here I am on Facebook yesterday, checking out a friend's page just to see how her New Years was. (I wouldn't exactly say I'm a Facebook creeper.. let's go with borderline creeper.)  Wouldn't you know it.  There is a comment left by Christina.  Christina has added two high school friends to her friend list.  Neither one of them is me.  It's awkward, now.  Since I was on Facebook first (and oh yes, I looked for her a couple of times on FB), she should send me a friend request, right? Or do I send her a friend request? Do I wait for her? It's like running into the mother of an acquaintance in the grocery store.  It's a pretty tenuous connection, so whaddyado?  Say hi or pretend not to see her?  And then if she says hi make up some quick lie like, "Oh, I wasn't sure if that was you or not?!" Am I over-thinking this?

I look back wistfully at the days when I was a kid.  Things in my world were so solid, so literal, that I never questioned that they would go on forever.  As a kid, there weren't many shades of grey.  As a kid, I would have staked my collection of New Kids on the Block posters, tapes, and memorabilia that my friendship with Christina would last forever.  Of course, I would have bet my NKOTB stuff that NKOTB would Rule The World Forever, too.

It's probably a good thing I don't gamble very often.