Memories

Lisa Bucholtz was my best friend through most of my childhood. We met when I was 3, but I don't know that for sure, that's just what I was told. I was so young, I don't remember how we met. We lived at the same apartment complex.

When I was 5, my world got turned upside down. My parents divorced. Lisa and her dad moved away. My mom got a boyfriend, and we moved in with him. He was a loser, and after a few months, pretty close to my 6th birthday we moved out into a tiny 1 bedroom apartment.

My mom didn't drive, so we walked everywhere. One day when we were walking somewhere, we saw Lisa's grandma. It turned out that Lisa lived just a few blocks away from us! I have so many memories of the 2 years that we lived in that little apartment that it feels like many more, especially to a child.

Lisa's dad was a terrible father, and most times when I went over to her house, we were alone. But, we really did stay out of trouble. We'd play and listen to music. Lisa had Purple Rain on 45, and we listened to it over and over again. She also had Bad and Thriller, and we wore them out. We'd make plans to start on our pop group, so we could beat the Jacksons at being the youngest singers. We'd talk about how cute Michael Jackson was (this was pre-plastic surgery).

Around the same time, there came a summer when my mom was working days at the fast food joint, and I was baby-sitter-less. Her boyfriend (who is now my stepdad) had a coworker who had a teenage daughter. This daughter had mornings free, but something she had to do in the afternoons during summer. So she would watch me in the mornings, then I would spend an hour or so in the afternoon hanging out at my mom's work.

I didn't really like this babysitter. I was bored a lot. She would make me go outside and play, but I wouldn't have anything to play with. I'd get inventive and use things like the bug candle on the table as a toy (as witch's pot, or a torch, or a hat, you get the idea) and get in trouble for it. She broke the handle on their downstairs bathroom door, and blamed it on me. I still remember her elaborate accusation, "I heard you shaking the door handle from upstairs!" But sometimes she'd color in my coloring books with me and we'd watch CHIPS and Charlie's Angels. I liked those times, and later when FX was a new channel, I would watch Charlies Angel's nostalgically.

For my 8th birthday, the 3 of us moved into a house in a neighboring city, and life changed drastically again. I still got to go over to Lisa's house, but obviously no where near as often. But we remained best friends. At one point, Lisa moved to Arizona to live with her mom for a year, and we got to talk on the phone occassionally. But she moved back. She even came over to my high school for a year.

Then she dropped out of high school our senior year. She babysat for my sister for a while, but when the school year ended, she wouldn't hang out with me or return my calls. (Granted, I was busy falling in love with Brian at the time.) We ended up finding out that she stole my mom's identity as well as my own. She charged up thousands of dollars in our names. She ended our friendship via credit report.

Now I'm just sad that I don't have that kind of a deep friendship anymore. (Well, I have my husband, my best friend in the whole wide world, but that's different than having a best girlfriend.) The news has made me think of her a lot today. Every Michael Jackson song that plays, every Charlie's Angels episode that's mentioned, makes me think of those times. Even though not everything was happiness, I still look back fondly.

RIP Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.