Who is the very first friend you ever had? Are you still in touch?
The earliest friend I can remember was were two boys, Brian and Eddie. I was six or seven years old, new to the apartment complex. Brian was a year older, lived in the next apartment complex over with his mother and brother. We played Star Wars a lot because it had come out, and we had action figures and trees and rocks. I lost touch with Brian when he moved, and we went to different schools anyway. I was in St. Jerome's, he in a public school. I saw him once when I was ten or eleven, in the grocery store. He wore a red and white baseball uniform, and he didn't seem to recognize me. I was sad. I haven't thought about Brian in years, and I don't know where he is or what he's doing. If I knew his last name, perhaps I'd Google him.
I knew the other boy, Eddie, through his mother, who was a friend of my mother. She was also a single parent, as I recall, and Eddie was a strange boy. He'd seen a lot of horror movies so he was fascinated with movie make-up, special effects, drawing and scary characters. I didn't spend much time with Eddie as we weren't in the same neighborhood, but I remember admiring his creativity.
There were some other childhood friends -- the Korean brother and sister with a large family, the Guatemalan boy destined to be a priest, the rich girl from parochial school. They came and went with the tides, and sometimes I think about them in passing. I suppose if I had more pictures from that period, I'd have stronger memories.
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