Silly Sal

Day 09: Someone you didn't want to let go, but just drifted

My freshman year of high school was an awesome time. I'd narrowly survived middle school, and high school was all about new beginnings: I started competitive (not synchronized) swimming, went to a new school (obviously), and met new friends. The awesome thing about my high school is that I'd gone to elementary with many people in my class since I'd been in magnet schools from kindergarten to 4th grade. So I had new friends and old friends that were new again.

One of the truly new friends was Sally. Sally was awesome! She was fun and silly, and we had similar personalities. She was also funky, creative, and out-going, which at that point in my life, I really wasn't. She introduced me to a lot of new people, and was also friends with people from my elementary school. We rode the bus to and from school together and had English together our freshman year. I remember us both melting into fits of giggles over the words "me thinks" and "fickle" while reading Romeo & Juliet. Why we thought that was so funny, I don't know, but we did.

Sally always had the most fun parties. Her birthday was in May, which was perfect for an outdoor Saturday night party in her parents' backyard. They were always costume parties - she'd split the invitees up by grade or alphabet and assign categories for costume theme. One year I had to be a Disney character, another year I was a hippie and wore my mom's wedding dress. It was at one of her parties where I first bonded with my very good friend, Rachel.

Basically, hanging out with Sally was just fun. We were always good friends in high school. We hung with the same crowd both in and outside of school. It's not like we were joined at the hip or anything, but we got along really well and spent quite a bit of time together. On Friday or Saturday nights, we'd always all get together at our hangout, Coffee Etc. and just chill.

When we graduated, I went away to Northern Arizona University and she stayed in Tucson to go to the University of Arizona. Since most of our group of friends went to NAU, she came and visited a few times, and we'd always meet up with her whenever we visited.

But like many friends do, we drifted apart. It sucks, because she is still awesome, but now she lives in Texas. I see her on Facebook (she just had a baby girl) and stuff, but I haven't actually seen her in person in probably 5 years, and even that was a brief run-in at a bar in Tucson. I wish we'd both made more effort to stay in better touch, but I know that sometimes that's just what happens to friendships. I'm hopeful that someday down the road, when she visits her family, timing will work out and we'll be able to get together, and I hope it's just as fun and silly as it was 14 years ago (oh my gosh, 14 yeeeears!) when we first met.