A friend is someone you share things with. That special kindred spirit who accompanies you on your journey through childhood, and a perilous trip that can be! Childhood is fraught with dangers, real and imagined. It is also a time of uncomplicated joy. My friend, Linda S, and I met each other when we were about nine and lived about ten houses apart. We both came from solidly middle-class (maybe lower middle-class) families and had three other siblings each. We both knew the other’s family almost as well as we knew our own. Both of our Dad’s worked, and both of our Mom’s were housewives.
On weekend mornings, we would by pre-arrangement wake very early and climb out our respective bedroom windows and hit the streets! By 8 a.m., we were flying around the block on our roller skates. We perfected our form and critiqued each other’s styles. Linda S would skate faster, but I had more finesse. Up and down the street, around the corner so we could skate the slight slope as fast as we could and feel like we were alpine skiing! It was splendid!
We shared secrets, did rain dances which we made up as we went along, stole bra’s from our friend’s older sister so we could try them on and stuff tissue in the cups to get a general idea of what was coming, and we discussed boys. Oh we discussed everything! No topic was too private or personal. We analyzed situations to death, and then resumed skating. We even shared a skate key! We got in trouble over the same things, and commiserated with each other on our unjust treatment from the parental units.
Linda and I sat on my front porch for hours on end waving at truckers, she in her blue hooded sweatshirt and me in my red hooded sweatshirt! We screamed in ecstasy when a truck driver would honk their horn at us! We talked about how cute the truckers were and which one liked one. One day, one of the admired truckers, parked his truck and started walking toward us. We noticed he was pretty old, (probably about forty) got scared and ran in the house! Why our fascination with truckers, I don’t know.
Linda S and I spent weekends together as young teens, either going to the Russian River to visit her family, or going to the “Marin Town and Country Club” with mine. (Naw, not a real country club but that was what they called it.) We had our share of fights, but usually made up pretty quick.
We both traded truckers in for real boys about the age of fourteen. We simply put the truckers aside and never looked back (well, I didn’t. I don’t think she did either.) Now we were on to Real Boys. We talked about them, plotted how to meet them, wrote poems about them, laughed about them, and cried over them for the next two years. (Yes, it affected our schoolwork.)
Linda S got her driver’s license when she turned sixteen. When we saw Sean Connery in his rendition of the exciting and fabulous James Bond, we both decided that’s what had been missing in our lives. Being a secret agent was a serious calling for both of us. She drove, and I wrote the journal (the “log”) about the people we followed. I termed these stalked citizens, “suspects.” Linda S thought that was a great name for them. We would chose a “suspicious-looking” person and follow them for hours.
Stakeouts, no problem, we had our radio and rock and roll. In order to perfect our craft, Linda S would hurry home and borrow a car from a brother, an uncle, an aunt, whom-some-ever, so that we could remain undetected in our endeavors! We were sly ones, we were!
