Tell Your Story

Musings from Me

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 11:57:35 -0500

Tess Jones shares her friend who got away story: Part 1, and Part 2.

Friend, Fool Or Foe

Fri, 07 Oct 2005 11:52:29 -0500

Here's a friendship story from Washington D.C. Daybook called Friend, Fool Or Foe.

"She was my hero first..."

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:58:01 -0500

She was my hero first, saving me from the school bully who's job it was
to intimidate the new kid at the school. We were in second grade.
Katie was beautiful, even then, with crystal blue eyes and high
cheekbones and beautiful blond wavy hair (the kind of fresh beauty
you'd find in California, not in our little Oregon 'burb), but still
there she was, yelling at the girl who had just pushed me down, me
looking up to see this sweet, but not innocent, face with this angry
voice pouring out, "If you ever touch her again, I'll kill you!" WOW!
At age 7 you just didn't say those things.

"Well it has been almost 10 months since we spoke..."

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:45:05 -0500

Well it has been almost 10 months since we spoke, except for the occasional wave hello or the rare telephone call asking for her daughter to come home or my daughter to come home from playing at each others houses.

We have been friends and neighbors almost since the day I moved into the neighborhood. Our daughters have been friends ever since they knew they were the same age and next-door neighbors. I considered her daughter to be my adopted daughter and I thought she felt the same.

Nancy's Story

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:42:32 -0500

Sometimes losing friends can be a positive, though painful impetus for change and growth. When they fade with time, it's ok, but I've never had one who called off our friendship as though it were some kind of guy thing. I've never had anyone block my phone calls, at least I assume that was what the funny sound was when I tried to call a couple of times.

Anam Cara

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:39:32 -0500

Sue and I had been what I called "anam cara" (or soul friends in Irish) since we were in 9th grade. We could not have been closer. We celebrated all our milestones together including the births of our combined 7 children. She is Godmother to my youngest. In spite of living in different states and the occasional lapse in communication we remained each others touch stones. Neither one of us had especially happy marriages and we cried on each others shoulders frequently. We always had a fantasy of becoming single and doing the "Kate and Allie" thing. I don't know how I would have gotten through many of my tragedies without her. I believe she felt the same way.

Alison's Story

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:35:18 -0500

Kimberly Jaworski was a small girl, slight in stature, with blonde hair and brown eyes. We started kindergarten together in the fall of 1976. We were four years old. The school was a small private Catholic school, the church was on the first floor of the school. Mrs. Dudley was our teacher and we played with blocks and doll houses, brought our lunch in metal lunchboxes depicting Raggedy Ann. We learned to spell our names and sang songs accompanied by Mrs. Whidden on the piano. We were sternly lectured to be respective of Mrs. Whidden as she made "pennies' and we were lucky to have her instruction. We sang with great vigor and Mrs. Whidden taught us that God loved our voices, no matter how horrible we perceived ourselves to sound. We went to Mass twice a week, and a third time on Sundays with our parents. Kim and I were featured in the local paper when we graduated from kindergarten. Kim is looking through her diploma as if it is a telescope, searching for the future. Special days were Field Days, when we would tie our ankles together to run a race and feast on hot dogs, chips and soda. The picnic benches outside were formed of concrete and we would carve our names and the ones we loved over the nine years we spent together at the school. Twenty five years later, I walked into that same kindergarten room to meet with other parents whose children were receiving their First Holy Communion and tears filled my eyes. The smell of the room remained the same, and the wonderful memories came flooding back. Other parents looked at me blankly when I said I attended kindergarten in this room, I felt they were intruders.

Kim was always the darling of the class, the smallest, most petite girl. Our class was made up of approximatley 25-30 kids, most of whom continued through eighth grade. In the sixth grade we had a small blonde teacher who adored Kim and despised me. I resented Kim for this perceived slight but by the eighth grade, Kim and I were very close friends.

Not a Habit

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:32:49 -0500

Susie, on her Not a Habit blog, writes about her take on The Friend Who Got Away.

Kimberly's Story

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:29:01 -0500

This story comes from reader Kimberly:

Hello,
I just got the book yesterday, and have completed most of the stories in the book, in one evening. It has been a journey through my own lost friendship that I have taken many a time. There have been so many stories I've read where the friendship, the deep bond, is so obviously still there that it pains me to hear these stories as much as it does for me to reflect on mine

Ann Hood's in particular seems to me so clearly a case where her friend, very simply, blames herself for Ann's daughter Grace's death. If I followed the story correctly, they had gone out the evening when the fever began to spike, of course not knowing what would happen. Though of course it was no one's fault, I really feel that her friend Amelia just felt as though it were her own fault, and she probably believes Ann Hood blames her too. That's why she comes sometimes, but stays on the periphery. She would not come there if she still did not care. But she is racked with guilt and doubt.

My story has been tragic enough, but too bad for me I can offer no solutions as to how to regain my own best friend. We've been more like mortal enemies for over a year now, since last February, though I don't know if the fact that she never has said ANYTHING to me since then can be taken as an enemy. We met at our sons' school about 4 yrs ago, almost 5 now. I have one son and she has 2, her oldest has a congenital birth anomaly and is my son's age. From the minute we met we hit it off. Everything about us was either the same or very similar, a point which always felt like a badge of honor to us. We even had similar names, her first being a variation of my middle. And interestingly, my family always has called me by my middle name, I use my first outside the family only.

Tell Your Story Blog is back!

Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:18:29 -0500

The bad news is that the Tell Your Story blog database got corrupted somehow (translation: all the entries were lost.)

The good news is that we're back now and in the process of recovering the stories from our backup.