The Best Apology of my Life

Angie had hair that was MUCH more 80s than this. 

When I talk about my childhood best friend, I am typically talking about a named Angie. She was and is my forever friend. Yet, when I first moved to Little Rock at the age of 9, Angie couldn’t stand me. I was a loud, obnoxious tomboy; she was a quiet, refined girlie-girl. In fact, she would wish for me to fall on my face every afternoon when I would get off the bus, run across the lawn, and leap off of a small retainer wall. I loved leaping off that thing and I never fell on my face, despite Angie’s wishes.

Where it all began for us. 

Our friendship began with a source of embarrassment for her, but a source of a secret comradely quirkiness. There was a day towards the end of 4^th grade when they combined two bus routes. The only seat left was next to Angie. She spent most of the ride looking out the window, straightening her frilly dress, and adjusting her hair. I was yapping away at anyone who would listen and being generally spastic. The driver would not let me move once some of the kids got off the bus, so we were stuck with each other in that hot, green vinyl seat. I was bored and she was annoyed.

"You're doing it wrong, Angie Dawn!"

All of a sudden, she channeled her inner Mork and started saying, “Neener, neener, neener, neener,” as she peered out the window. Ms. Prim and Proper had intrigued me. I said, “What in the world are you doing?” She blushed and said, “Oh! It is just something that I do sometimes. Try it. It feels neat.” There we were on the bus, in unison, quietly whispering, “Neener, neener, neener, neener.” We have been best friends ever since. We are still complete opposites, but she did teach me how to do my make-up and wear more than jeans and sweatshirts.

However, there is always someone who doesn’t get mentioned in the story of my best friendships or the story of the boys that changed my life.

Scott.

Scott came riding in my life on his bike full of imagination, adventure, and attitude. He sized me up and decided that, despite being a girl, I was a worthy adversary; he made me his partner in crime instead.

He would probably say that I was a part of his Foot Clan.

This kid looks like a wimp compared to Scott. 

We met at a patch of blackberries on my street. He was mouthing off to the nosy neighbor who demanded that he stop eating the blackberries. He demanded that she give her kids decent names (seriously, her kids had awful names). I thought this was a perfect opportunity to demonstrate some 9 year old defiance and joined in to prove how tough I was.

Except we were mini-metal heads

Imagine Veda and Thomas’ friendship with My Girl, but without the wimpiness of Thomas, the morgue in the Veda’s house, and the kiss. We were that close, but not close enough to kiss. That would have been completely incestuous.

We spent our afternoons riding our bikes around the neighborhood behaving as miniature, blonde vigilantes. We even had a secret hiding place for notes under a loose brick on someone’s retaining wall in order to communicate when I was grounded, which was often.

It could happen in Arkansas.

There were numerous adventures that typically ended up in one of us or both us of getting into trouble and always treated as if we were being overly dramatic. For example, we went hiking into the ravine in our neighborhood and thought that wild dogs were chasing us. We ran up the opposite side of the hill, in someone’s back yard, and eventually on a service road. My mother laughed at the wild dog story.

We were also chased my an ax murdered one Halloween. After were were done running for our lives, we discussed that we had proof this time – my pillow case had lost all of its sugary contents because the material had been sliced (by the ax murderer, of course). My mom said that we got worked-out and I must have snagged my pillow case while we were running.

What my former neighbor is probably doing now. 

From my window at night, I could see my neighbor opening his crawl space and dragging out something in a bag that was very heavy. He also had a shovel. He would dig in the dark for a very long time and when he returned his shovel to the crawl space, no heavy bag was returned.

I peddled as fast as I could to meet Scott to discuss this the next Saturday morning. It was obvious that this man was burying a body, right? We went into surveillance mode, but we eventually got bored and went on to play NES. My mom claims that our neighbor was gardening at night because of his work schedule. Uh, huh.

There was another neighbor down the way that looked freakishly like Prince. He would drive his Camaro too fast for our liking. We first noticed where he lived while we were messing with The Old Man’s Koi fish. His tidy, gnome-like house did not match his flashy exterior. There had to be a secret there. 

That "stray dog" must have had opposable thumbs. 

We watched him for weeks and say no movement. On one of our stakeouts, we noticed an opened parcel with something shiny sticking out. When a “stray dog accidentally” knocked it over, a golden throwing star fell out. HE WAS AN EVIL NINJA!!! Scott and I became heroes that day as were made sure to rid the world of his weapon of mass destruction. I didn’t bother to get my mother’s opinion on this. She would probably have said the “stray dog” wasn’t real and she certainly would have made me search the woods and apologize to Ninja Prince. 

One of our last adventures was in the middle of a fight (he had locked in a playhouse with the most perverted boy that I had every known and after beating the boy up and throwing him out of the playhouse window, I stormed home). Scott rode his bike to my house and declared, “I know we aren’t speaking, but we have until midnight to get to South America or the entire world will explode.”

It was the best apology from a guy that I ever received.

Unavoidably, puberty came and interfered with our adventures. He became friends with the biggest basketball-headed jerk that I had ever met and Angie had begun the process of helping me transition into girlie things. Our adventures were over.

Scott is a part of some of my best childhood memories and I credit him for helping build my imagination. Because of my friendship with him, I knew how to get in the dirt and play imaginative games with my own little boy. The level of silliness shared with the both are priceless.

Some part of me never will. 

Where is Scott now? He lives in the country with his beautiful wife with a family of critters to wrangle with every day. He is a good guy and probably one of the most awesome people that I will ever know.

P.S. Did I mention the time that Angie’s dad, who was a police officer, busted us throwing rocks at cars? I didn’t mention that to Angie or my mother.