The Circle

I remember when I met my friend Stephanie, aka "My Sister" aka "Sis" 25 years ago!
It was 1984 and I was 9 years old. I had just moved to Village Circle. I left behind my friends and moved to a new home in a town where I was the only person wearing a Michael Jackson t-shirt and carrying a purse with his picture ironed onto it. I was ahead of the curve and the King of Pop craze in my new town.
So I arrived at the bus stop that first morning and there was Sis standing over the sewer drain with her brother and another boy from our neighborhood. I thought, hmmm... interesting. I wonder what they are looking at down in the sewer?? As I got closer I realized they had the cover off of the sewer and had convinced one of the neighborhood boys to climb down into the drain!! It was obvious Sis was the ring leader of this crew. I stood there thinking, what kind of place did I move to??? And I vowed that I would NEVER be friends with this girl, even if she was the only other female in the neighborhood!!!

Needless to say by the time we got off the bus that afternoon and walked up the big hill home, we were best friends for life!! Shwinns in fact!! Shwinns are a set of "sisters" who are "twins" who are not blood related. Or at least that is what we told people back in the day. Sis is 6 months older, but was one grade ahead in school. So we were friends in the neighborhood aka The Circle, but we also has our school friends. When I was in 4th grade we told one of my school friends that we were sisters, twins actually. She wanted to know why we didn't live in the same house. She was a smart one that girl! SO we had an elaborate story that included foster homes, adoption, and other such "stretches" of the truth. Once the story was rolling it was hard to back track so we just forged ahead adding details as we went.

We had a great time growing up in The Circle. We played Barbies until we were 13 (sad, but true) We built snow houses that we moved everything we owned into including a TV one winter (our Moms were not impressed) We were in love with the boy next door (well next door is relative because we had a few boys in the neighborhood that we fell for at different phases and not all lived literally next door) and we stalked the Paper Boy on a regular basis. We had countless sleepovers. We babysit every kid in the neighborhood including the 6 week old that we fought over and had to set the oven timer so that we cold take turns holding her every 15 minutes (nowadays no one would let 12 year olds watch a newborn, but in the ol' days this was a normal thing) And we tortured most of the boys that lived near us. Especially 2 that were particularly dorky. We told everyone made up stories about them, but the worst part was we told the true stories like the fact that they still had babysitters at 15 years old!! We were wicked!!!

We had it all planned out back then...we would marry twin brothers (we actually knew a set at school that we were in love with so it worked perfectly with the plan) Then we would live next door to each other, each have twin daughters, and own a beach house where we would vacation every summer. In our free time we would run our restaurant, Burger Time.

Flashforward 25 years... Well the twin husbands and daughters didn't work out, but I have twin sons. And Bruger Time never happened, but Sis married an excellent cook so that could still eb a possibility. And we don't live next door, but luckily we live on the same coast again!! So we are in driving distance of each other.

Last week I drove up to visit Sis and her newborn baby, Kaitlyn. I took Isabella with me so she could meet her future best friend. It was a fantastic visit. We hung out and held our real life baby dolls while we ate Oreos and chatted!! Just like old times, except now we have our little girls with us. And someday I can only hope that they will make as many wonderful memories as we have. The Circle continues...