How It begins-A life-long friendship is born...

Grammar School...a playground pact


In 1969, I stood on the frozen tundra of the playground contemplating my choices. I could go home for lunch or….. I could go home for lunch. Fifth graders don‘t have a lot of choices. As I turned toward home I heard a voice behind me, “Hey Adrienne, since nobody likes either one of us, wanna come to my house for lunch? We might as well be friends.”
Jane, a girl in my fifth grade class, had lain down the desperate gauntlet of friendship.

The invitation had all the social logic of a fifth grader and it was incredibly practical. I could finally hang out with a girl who was as matter of fact about social survival as I was. We sealed the deal over tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches prepared by her mom that day. Ahhh…the simplicity of childhood. It is that window of time in life where the blunt truth just seems like pure logic. I went home with Jane for lunch that day and forty years later, I am still going to her house for lunch. We are an anomalie. We are life long friends. The real deal. And we thought we were the norm. We were wrong. Today, we have coffe every morning at my house.


Nobody liked us because in fifth grade we were the “teachers pets”. It was the one and only time that I liked school.

A grammar school playground is a petrie dish of social drama. Recess is hell on earth. Picking teams for any sport was an exercise in humiliation for most girls. For some reason I was picked before some boys. Why? Because I could run fast, hit a softball a mile, and liked to push boys down. Hard. So did Jane. The years passed and we bonded over social traumas and slights that I like to think we managed more smoothly because we had each other.
Then the hormones hit.....

Middle school came on fast, just like all our hormones. Jane was distracted by boys and I still couldn’t figure them out. I lost count of how many times she went steady with some unsuspecting hormonally savaged boy. She was a feminine machine who actually needed a bra before anyone else did. The rest of us just demanded that our mothers take us for that rite of passage-the first bra-whether we needed one or not. In short, she left me in the dust. She was on a female trajectory I couldn’t comprehend. Launched into womanhood like an estrogen missile. I was in awe.

I am not an expert in friendship, but enough people have asked me along the way, Mom included, how I do it? How do I make and maintain my friendships?

The truth is, I don't know exactly. So, I thought that since so many people struggle with this, I would share my own experience without ego. I am not positioning myself as the "perfect friend". Truth be told, I am often a pain in the ass. But, if you have an amazing friend, or would like to be a better one, why not start now?
Share your stories and maybe we can figure it out together.

Your pal, buddy, confidante, and friend

Adrienne