It's a Small World

Really and Truly!

I am a Navy Brat and yes, those two words really do require proper capitalization, imho, because even though my dad served his country very honorably for twenty plus year, his wife and children "served" just as well.

Anyhow, when I was in 7th grade, we moved from cold as hellButte, Montana after my dad did two years serving in the capacity of being in charge of the recruiting stations. We moved back to the SF Bay Area to the district where I currently teach in. It was a rough transition in many ways, but I was lucky. Within a matter of weeks, I found a BFF. We were in choir together, loved the "twins" and giggled and laughed like only 12 year old girls will do. We were inseparable.

However, both of our dads were in the Navy. Two years into our friendship, my BFF moved away. We wrote letters and managed to keep in touch for a couple of years. Then, my dad retired, we moved several times, and eventually, I lost contact with my BFF.

Over the years, I've searched the Internet, tried friendfind, did Classmates and Reunion.com with no luck. Today, I was on Facebook. My mom and my sister are very active facebookers (is that a word?) and I've been trying to keep up. As I typed up respones to a meme from my sister, I thought to myself, I wondered if my former BFF was on Facebook. I typed in several variations of her name when I came upon a possible hit. I shoot off a message, thinking to myself that it's probably another dead-end. Literally within five minutes, I get a response. It was my former BFF!

Incredibly, she lives only 20 minutes from my house. She has lived there since she was 16! We have probably walked by each other at the local home improvement store. She e-mailed me her phone number and we ended up talking for about 40 minutes on the phone. It felt like old times.

One of the things I have missed as an adult is the friendship that exists between women. Part of that comes from having a shared history. Since I went to so many schools over the years, moved and lived so many places, I feel like I have a lot of acquaintances, but am only really close to my mom and my cousin. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but I will say this, I just talked to someone I have felt like I've known my whole life, even though the last time we talked we were both only 14 years old.