Over the years, I have staying in touch with my good friend Gayle; she is one of the few people that I know that lives in my hometown. This is a picture of her with her lovely daughter, Amy.
Gayle and I originally met in 4-H when we were about twelve or thirteen, but I didn’t like her because all my 4-H boyfriends really, really liked her, and I was jealous. She was blonde and pretty and I thought of myself as rather dark and gangly. I also thought that she was interested in my brother, Stan which I judged her poorly for. But in my freshman year of high school I was thrust into PE with a bunch of people that I didn’t know. Most of my friends like Laura, Sheila, Wendy, Pam, Ellen and Kathleen had other classes. OGHS was a mixture of 3-4 different junior highs. I sort of recognized Gayle and ended up hanging out with her. We also got to know Nancy who came from the Catholic school, and that sort of made my non-Orange Glen trio of friends. My best friend, Laura, in the meantime was fast-tracking into the cool kids group. In her classes she met Anne McLeod and they became friends. I got jealous which was odd; in my freshman year, I had lots of new friends, and so did Laura, but we still hung out. Thing were okay, but the the big problem was my boyfriend. He didn’t like the time I spent with Laura. They had actually gone together in junior high and I think he resented that she had broke up with him. In our sophomore year, he had convinced me that Laura was getting to be a “social” and was stuck up. He insisted I tell her. That ended up being disastrous. Laura and I broke up and were not friends again until late in my Junior year after my boyfriend and I started breaking up. It taught me a lesson about possessive and jealous behavior of boyfriends at a high price. Gayle and Nancy ended up being my "new" friends. When I got married, Gayle got the flu and couldn’t be a bridesmaid. I felt so bad for her; she was living in Chico and had driven all the way back to Escondido for the wedding and had sewn the bridesmaid dress! So my wedding party ended up being from left, my cousin Georgette instead of Gayle– who could fit into Gayle’s dress at the last minute. Nancy, my cousin Loretta, and Laura as maid of honor. My cousin Mary Ester was the flower girl. I have lost touch with Nancy. I last saw her around 1985 when she and her family came to visit us in Arizona. Gayle and I email weekly and whenever I visit Escondido, we see each other. We have hopes that someday she'll come here after Covid and I'm fully retired and we'll spend a week seeing the Florida Keys. The important thing is that is it great to make new friends, but make sure you keep the old; as the song goes - "one is silver and the other gold."
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