2 Polly and sherry

sherry and polly were my bestest friends when i lived on east fifth avenue.  living two doors down from our house, they were ever-ready playmates.  sherry was my age and polly was a year or two younger.  the games we played were dependent on the season; the ones i remember most took place in our backyards and in the adjoining alley.

one game in particular was 'school', a summer favorite.  did we really miss school that much?  we found two old school desks which served as our props.  pooling some pocket change we bought construction paper, handwriting paper, etc., to add to our own collection of pencils and scissors. taking turns being the teacher was a delight... for the chosen teacher.  not only did the teacher get to mimic our teachers from shepard elementary school and to teach whatever s/he wanted, but the teacher was a allowed to discipline within reason.  a slap on the hand, putting a dunce cap on the offending student, or placing the student in the corner were common punishments, punctuating with a bit a giggling and eye-rolling.  more times than not, the punishment became more important than the game itself.  someone would get angry, slam and book or rip a piece of paper and walk off in a huff.  but after a time of calming down, we would resume our friendship, one that we vowed would last forever.

one particular thing that bound the three of us together was our mutual understanding of sherry's pseudo-language. many could not understand the short morse codeish words with which she spoke.  but polly and i understood perfectly, sometimes too perfectly given the saucy language that this preacher's son learned.  i can remember my mom bringing a snack out to us, and chatting with us for a few minutes.  later on, she would ask me to interpret what sherry had said.  how simple was that!

by the time sherry and i had finished second grade, sherry and polly moved to west columbus and we moved to gahanna.  there were several of phone calls which diminished quickly as we engaged in our new environments.  within a few years, they moved to gahanna and sherry was in my sixth grade class.  but it wasn't the same.  both of us had changed and we hung out with different people.                 just as sherry had lost her pseudo-language, so had we lost a friendship that had once been so important to both of us.  by the time high school came around, we didn't even speak.

friendships are rarely forever.  how in the world would i keep up with every friend i ever had?   two people can share a bond for a time that can feel like forever.  but life happens; the friendship dissolves or fades away.  and we are left with memories, stories, and secrets that we shared.  the melancholy that comes with the memories are reminders that friendships past and present become a part of who we are.  we move on, open to other possibilities.

fyi, while still in high school,  polly and her boyfriend died by carbon dioxide poisoning in a parked car. for years after, i heard nothing about the family. in the recent past, however, sherry and i were facebook friends for awhile.  i think we both needed to know each other's whereabouts. nothing more.  we had discovered that we now spoke different languages.