WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT #6

Weekend Assignment #6: Tell us about your best friend in second grade (or the grade closest to that in which you remember having a "best friend"). Where is he or she now? Do you still keep in touch?

My best friend in second grade, in Walpole, Massachusetts, was Mary Allen Hawkins.  We are no longer in touch, a fact I lament, because she was my first "best friend" and I remembered her fondly long after that.  Still do, in fact.  My name is Mary Ellen, hers was (hopefully still is) Mary Allen, it was made in heaven. We were both bookworms, somewhat pudgy, wore glasses, had long pigtails down our backs, did not have TV's in our households.  We were, I now see in retrospect, second-grade nerds!  We didn't know that, though, and so we had lots and lots of fun together.  We read the same books, talked about them, acted them out  (big fight over who got to be Jo, in Little Women, because of course we both wanted to!), went to the Library together, rode on the Swan Boats together in the Public Garden in Boston. 

We were tight as ticks for that one year.  My father was going to grad school at Tufts in Boston, but by the next school year we had moved away to Pennsylvania and I entered third grade as a newcomer.  Because my father was a dentist in the U.S. Army, this happened constantly.  I can't even count the number of schools I attended in my life as a dependent child.  However, Mary Allen and I remained long-distance friends.  We wrote, we phoned, and  -this will show you what a long time ago this all was, what a different world we lived in-  that next summer I rode the train, by myself, from Philadelphia to Boston, where Mary Allen's family met me and I spent part of my vacation there.  (Can you imagine putting an eight year old on a train by herself nowadays?  I sure wouldn't.  My mother sat me beside, and put me in the care of, a Nice Lady who was also traveling to Boston.  Still, knowing my mother, even in those days she worried constantly until the phone call came of my arrival.)

The snake in the garden though - I had aquired a New Best Friend in PA by then, Molly O'Day was her name.  We remained BF's through fifth grade, after which my family moved off to the Next Place.  Mary Allen and I remained in touch for a long time, with decreasing frequency of course.  I tried to find her when I moved back to MA in the 1980's as an adult.  But the trail was cold.  She'd grown up, probably married, moved away.  Mary Allen - if you're out there somewhere in Internet Land and this finds you - send up a flare!  I'd love to know your story.

Haven't yet unearthed a picture from this time, but I'm going thru boxes.  I see you get Extra Credit for pictures!

Later the same day:  no Extra Credit for me.  The closest I can come to a second grade picture is a first grade First Communion picture.  Pretty darn cute it is too.  Maybe it will fit into some later weekend assignment, who knows?