I met my friend Chris in 5th grade. He was a new kid and me and my friend Craig wanted someone else to play catch with at recess so we invited him. He was obsessed with baseball like 10-year old me and loved old TV shows and stuff like that, too. I was going through my awkward phase where I had only a few friends and was bullied sometimes, but he was my main man.

He also lived in the condos across from our grade school withh is Mom and her creepy boyfriend with this piratical moustache, who liked walking around with his shirt off (I remember being vaguely wigged by his abundant grey chest fur). When they later moved, he used to call the mom and give her a hard time. (I later found out his dad had gone to jail). We had fun jumping on his waterbed at any rate. His brother was a budding delinquent who simultaneously intrigued and scared the hell out of both of us. Around 7th grade he moved and was in a different school. I'd come hang out at his mom and his apartment sometimes, but as time went by we drifted apart. In high school I ran into a few people who knew him and we caught up occasionally. Last I heard, he graduated valedictorian from his vo-tech high school and went to college for engineering. Hope he's doing well.

I had several "best friends" through middle school, but my closest in 3rd grade was Mario, who lived a few blocks away from me. In the morning, he'd wait for me at my house and we'd walk to school together. In the afternoon, we'd meet in front of the school and walk home together (now that I think about it, he was probably a grade older than me). At the corner near my house, I'd turn right and he'd keep going.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure he had a crush on me, because he would never let me leave at the corner until I got angry. But anyway, he would protect me from bullies and the scary high-schoolers that waited at the bus stop.

For awhile, I was very cruel to him (shunning him for another friend), which has always weighed on my conscience. Of course, he forgave me, but still. I was a very cruel child.

Let's see. There was Tina, who had heart surgery when we were in elementary school and lived in the 'bad part' of town, so I could never go to her hours and she couldn't come to mine. We would hang out at recess together because I was never invited to play games and she wasn't allowed to either because of her surgery.
There was Krystal, who kept me out too late at a birthday party one night (it was her birthday) and I got in trouble for it.
There was Nicole and Heather, who just pretended to be my friends in order to tear me down faster. Fucking bitches.
There was Nathan too, who had 3 cats and a treehouse. He also had a brother who was mentally retarded (which was my first experience with a retarded person). We used to fight with sticks and pop guns. I remember feeding his cats when they all went on vacation.

It's weird to remember these things. :-/

ETA: Tina ended up at the same middle school as me, but moved away suddenly.
Krystal and I lost touch after the birthday incident.
Nicole and I had a falling out after I punched Heather on her last day at our school.
Nathan moved away suddenly too. I never learned what happened to him.

I had a best friend, A. We got close in fourth grade, and remained close right through high school. She was the oldest of six, I was the oldest of two. She had two parents; mine were divorced and dad was absent. I loved the chaos of her house; she married at 18 just to get out (I was her maid of honor). We skipped school once to check out an abandoned house, I remember she was a huge "RUSH" fan. I took my first ever plane ride out to Utah to visit her and her husband (he was in the military). I'm godmother to their second son, not that I've ever done right that way. We have the kind of relationship where months can go by without any contact, but once we do get a hold of each other, it's like no time has passed. On her 40th birthday two years ago, it was neat to see pictures of me mixed in with the rest of her family over the years - even neater because she had "new" friends there and I liked them to see the history we have. I didn't see her since then; just an occasional phone call or e-mail. But then Mr. V had to have surgery in Philly - over an hour from home. She generously offered her daughter's room for me to crash in, since she's only about 20 minutes from the hospital. (Oh, by the way, she's also my hero. After 12 years of marriage and four kids, her husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore and left. That was 12 years ago. She put herself through college, bought a townhouse on her own, and is raising her kids herself). True friends like this are rare, and more precious than diamonds.

Shoot. Edit that to say "I HAVE a best friend, A."

There was Nicole and Heather, who just pretended to be my friends in order to tear me down faster. Fucking bitches.

WTF is up with those girls? I mean, I was cruel, but girls like that were crueler.

I have/had two best friends from childhood. Brandi and Melissa. We all lived in the same trailer park. We've known one another since we were four years old. We remained close throughout our entire lives. Very sadly, Brandi died when she was 31 of breast cancer. I miss her so very much.

Brandi was a great kid even though she had a pretty neglectful upbringing. Her mother loved her, but she was an alcoholic and a drug-addict. Brandi pretty much raised herself. I remember her roaming the neighborhood early in the morning with a box of Lucky Charms. She fed and fended for herself. The floorboards of her trailer had holes in them and were rotted. She was mature and never got into drugs or alcohol. She wasn't promiscuous. She did well in school. She was a good person and a great friend. We loved to roller skate together. We skated all the time as kids in the trailer park and in our teens at the roller rink. Brandi was beautiful. Everybody loved her, but she didn't know it. As a kid she loved the movie Xanadu. She believed in angels and god. Her father was a heroin addict. He was on his way to recovery but fell asleep at the wheel and was killed. Her mother consoled her with beer to help calm her. She was ten-years old at the time. We would roam the neighborhood together for hours on end everyday -- Brandi, Melissa, and I. We tried to smoke cigarettes when we were ten. We put on numerous plays as young kids. We were always outside playing together. We were inseparable. Brandi remained a close person in my life until she died. She was my sister's roommate. We had jobs together. She was always there.

Melissa and I are still very close. Melissa is such a caring, wonderful friend. I could go on about Melissa, but you asked for one childhood friend. To be brief, Melissa and I were, and are, extremely close. I would spend weeks in the summer at her house on the beach. (All of our families got out of the trailer park eventually). We ran wild together, but not too wild. We worked together, went to school together. We did everything together. Besides by sister, Melissa is the only person I can be completely myself with. She knows me inside and out.

Here is a picture of us I can locate that isn't glued down in a scrapbook. or at my parent's house. ≡ Click to see image ≡

Back row is me and my sister from left to right. Front is Melissa and Brandi, from left to right. We were going through and awkward hair period.

I never really had a best friend so much as a clump of friends I usually hung with. The earliest clump was a buncha kids in the neighborhood who all hung at Mel's house because she had an awesome concrete pad and basketball goal in her backyard. I spent hours and hours on that thing, both solo and with the friend clump.

With that same clump of friends we learned to use tampons together (!!!), and we built miniature neighborhoods in the dirt and played with Tonka trucks - the small ones with REAL rubber wheels and die cast bodies.

In Jr. High and High school I was mainly part of the nerd crowd, but even at that I was a weirdo clown.The fellow nerds (honor society geeks, etc) appreciated my humor & antics, though generally nobody knew what to do with me. They still don't.

I'm still in touch with about 3 of those friends from grade school - we get together about twice a year. Of those, 1 is on her 3rd marriage, and the other two are apparently eternally single. (I'm not sure if they're closeted or just unattached by choice or what.)

Oh, and one of my friends from the basketball clump days went on to become a doctor like his older brother. Many of the others became delinquent-ish.

I had a best friend through my elementary and jr high years. We were both the nerdy geeky types that girls didn't go for. Kinda like me now. We spent a lot of time doing stuff together, and had the normal 70's kid fantasies. I remember one time him telling me that he could see me having a girlfriend that next school year, the 8th grade. (Didn't happen). I remember one year he spent the year in East Lansing Michigan (we grew up in Northern California), and he had this irritating way of saying "sweet" to stuff that was cool. Pretty annoying. We ended up going to different high schools, and drifting apart some, though we kinda kept in touch. I went to college, and he drifted and dreamed. He ended up going into the Navy, and had a lot of opportunity being an intelligent guy IQ-wise, but squandered it because of a lack of interest and initiative, and so spent the remainder of his Navy years chipping paint on an aircraft carrier. That was actually a promotion for him from cleaning the head since one of the guys chipping paint was fermenting potatoes in his foot locker and it exploded and he got busted. I ran into my friend once or twice later on, and he had become pretty much an alcoholic. Dunno what ever happened to him in later years, though I heard that he was trying to dry out and was working as a cook in Michigan. I ended up an underachiever knuckledragger, and still don't have a girlfriend.

I went all through primary school and the first two years of high school (age 5-14) with the same group of kids. One of them was M. Her dad's house was two streets away, and we often hung out on our bikes after school (I was home on my own from age 7) and had adventures. I was with her when I found the shaved dead cat in a plastic bag, I was with her the first time I got flashed, I was with her when I knocked out my front teeth using the massive stormwater drain across the road as a skate bowl, I was with her when I nicked $30 out of my dad's huge change jar and spent it all on lollies, and I was with her the first time I went to the feminist bookshop that opened in our little suburban shopping centre when I was 10.

She lived in a house with her two brothers and her father's on-off girlfriend and sometimes various random other people, and her father lived in a cabin he'd built in the yard next to the greenhouse filled with marijuana, tomatoes and orchids. Her brother had the Thriller LP and we danced for hours, and they had huge elaborate costume parties that were great fun. The first bong I ever saw was on their mantelpiece, but M told me it was an incense burner when I asked - and at the time that's probably what she thought it was. Her mother lived in the same suburb, but over the main road, with her girlfriend. It was at her mum's I played the HHGTTG game (for many, many hours - god that game was frustrating). She was never a happy kid.

We all went off the rails a bit for those first two years of high school, but M went a bit further off than anyone else - she broke into and robbed another friend's home, became a bomber and tried to be a gangster and we were on the outs for quite a while. I moved away, and thought that was that.

But she keeps popping up in my life. My father moved back to my hometown years later and met a woman and a fell in love, and her son was very good friends with M from a drama group he's in. We hung out when I went down for visits. I move to the UK, and am out on a long drive for work with a colleague (also Australian), get chatting and she recognises M from stories I'm telling her - turns out they were best friends from uni in another city altogether and M had told her the same stories. So we've been emailing occasionally over the last few years. She really did have a tough childhood, started and dropped out of uni a bunch of times, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia age 17 after a few violent psychotic breaks, but is totally managing it, finished a degree, has a great job and relationship and her shit together. I'm really proud of her, but wish I'd been more aware of - and able to support her better through - the really hard times she was having at home and in her head.

We had a whole lot of fun, though.