How I Learned to Be a Friend

I don’t remember how old I was when I met Jennifer. Maybe six or seven. She and her family moved into a house three doors from ours on a quiet cul-de-sac with only 20 other houses with great big yards in Independence, Ohio. My only playmate until then was a boy. My heart just about burst with joy when I met Jen.

All Day, Every Day

It seemed we were together nearly every day, all day. Inside, outside, her house, my house. When she wasn’t around, I moped. I thought it was unfair that she had a life away from me.

We collected rubber erasers shaped like bears, ducks, elephants, hippos, rabbits and pigs, and built shoebox houses for them. I knew the names of all her critters, she knew all of mine, and they had distinct personalities. I recall at some point we decided they should have babies. We placed the designated mother and father close to each other on a Kleenex bed. “What happens?” one of us might have asked. “I don’t know. His thing has to go inside her,” I seem to remember one of us said. We decided the father had to keep the thing inside the mother for a long time. Maybe all night. Just to be sure.

We really had no clue.

We also played with Japanese made “Lovable Uglies” — curious looking jungle animals with tufts of hair on their heads.

Jen and I found secret hiding places in the woods behind my house. We made roads for Matchbox cars on a heap of dirt in her yard. We climbed trees (she went higher than I dared). We used clothespins to clip playing cards to our bikes so they hit the spokes and made noise like a motor. We stuffed plastic bags inside our snow boots to keep our feet dry and played outside in the snow until we lost feeling in our fingers and toes. We collected lightning bugs in jars. We pretended we got kidnapped. We skateboarded like maniacs on her curving driveway when skateboards in the mid sixties were no more than flat boards with little wheels.

Sisters of sorts

We may as well have been sisters — both of us had siblings too old to be playmates. I suppose we fought like sisters, too, but I don’t recall it happened often. Since there was usually no one else to play with, we made up fast. Besides, I really hated it when we argued. From playing with Jen I learned how to share. I learned being hurtful hurt me, too.

Then we didn’t play with toys anymore. Our interests and lives broadened. She was athletically gifted; I was artistically inclined. We went off to college, moved away from home, made our own busy lives.

Reconnected years later

What fun it’s been to connect on Facebook some forty years later. I was thrilled to learn Jennifer has Ph.D. in PE pedagogy. She’s an assistant professor at Kent State with an obvious talent for teaching. That makes perfect sense to me.

And what a trip to discover we’re both incredibly sentimental. She saved her rubber eraser critters. I saved my Lovable Uglies and their cardboard house. We’re such softies! My granddaughter looked at the Uglies a while ago and wasn’t impressed. She thought they were a little weird. Jen boxed up the eraser animals (I think she kept a few she was particularly fond of) and shipped them to me, so maybe my granddaughter will like to play with them.

If not, I sure enjoy having them.

Most of all I enjoy the memories. Thanks, Jennifer.