True Friends Show Up With A Plate Of Cookies
That has potential lifetime impacts
I grew up in a small town near the four corners area of New Mexico. When I was a young kid, my dad woke up one morning and said to all of us, “We need to move.”
This was a huge shock for all of us. This meant leaving behind our whole life, including family, friends, and relationships that we’ve spent a lifetime developing. At almost twelve years old, I had established a solid group of friends.
Right before we moved, school started and we happened to live right across the street from the Junior High that I went to. Literally, the football field was right across the street and you could even watch football games from our front yard if you wanted.
The other perk of living across the street from your school was, you could hear the bell ring from my house. You knew that you had exactly five minutes to get to your first class.
Our house was the perfect host for a good pancake breakfast for all of my friends before class. It wasn’t too long after that, we had to leave this little piece of heaven behind, which included all of our friends and family that we enjoyed each and every day.
My thought as we were packing up the moving truck was, “This will be great, a leap of faith into the unknown, it’s okay that we’re moving, I’ll make new friends.”
New move new life
We moved and started our new life. I was hopeful for the future. The hope and success that I was looking for did not go as planned. Days turned into months and I began to feel like I would not make any more friends.
Luckily I had my family. During this time, my mom gave me some wise advice. She said, “someday you will realize that your best friends are your own family.”
That became true my first summer at our new location. I had my older brother to tag along with. At the time, he worked the night shift at his job and on his days off, I joined him in all the fun during the graveyard shift. This turned into us sleeping in the late hours of the day.
As we were waking up at noon, we heard a knock at our front door. It was this kid that lived around the corner with a mouth full of braces, freckles, red hair, and a plate of cookies.
I was thinking, who is this kid? After more weeks that went by, he kept coming over, same grin, different food. But the thing was, he was consistent.
He kept coming over, multiple times over a couple of months, over and over. Starting with a plate of cookies is perfect to break the ice. Consistent follow-up turned into small talk and eventually turned into an invitation to ride bikes in the neighborhood. Once that got comfortable, an exchange of colorful jokes began a friendship to last a lifetime.
This friendship opened my world up to a whole group of other friends that would fill my time up with many adventures. It’s a good feeling when you’re able to surround yourself with good people who care about you and value who you are.
This friend who lived around the corner was the most entertaining specimen I have ever encountered. I’ll give you a couple of examples.
Chatting online
These were the days before iPhone’s and social media. To accomplish chatting online, you had to have something a bit newer than your average commodore 64.
This whole concept of chatting online to complete strangers was forbidden in my friend’s household. He went ahead with it anyway. Strict rules were to be followed. But the opportunities far outweighed the consequences, so he thought.
The exchange of friendly conversation went downhill fast, all because my friend got tired and decided to lay on the couch for a while. This would have been fine, but he failed to communicate that to his new online friend.
His new online friend noticed he stopped talking and was concerned that maybe something was seriously wrong. This concern turned into action. This online friend managed to locate his address and contact the local authorities, including firefighters and the ambulance who quickly arrived at my friend’s house.
My friend woke up to a knock on the door. He glanced at his computer with words of panic all over the monitor. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?” He heard his mom answer the door. With panic, he went outside and tried to undo the tangled web that he weaved.
This was going to take a lot more than a plate of cookies to fix.
There was so much confusion from all parties, but it eventually got sorted out, followed by many apologies and a 3-month summer lock down enforced by my friend’s dad.
The only fun activity for him to do was sit in his tree out front and wait for neighborhood cars to pass by.
This story turned into a lifetime of laughter as we reflected back on this memory.
Looking for fun in all the wrong places
As our friendship continued, it was time to expand our possibilities. We heard high school rumors of a huge party going on in a wealthy neighborhood. We didn’t exactly know where, but we were confident that we would find this gem.
We bought some IBC root beer to look at the part. We began our journey and drove up and down the neighborhood to look for this party.
We were hoping to find a ton of cars parked outside of a house. After much effort, possibly hours we were unsuccessful.
Lesson learned, you either need to be invited or you need an inside source to the actual location of this coveted activity. Looking back, we realized how ridiculous our attempts must have been, but it has made for a good belly laugh.
Obsessed with music
We would download all kinds of music and burn them to those round things called CDs.
We both appreciated what a good stereo sounded like. At times, we had music playing so loud that I eventually felt nauseous. I became pale and my ears turned red.
Not the smartest move, but there were years of custom playlists that only true friends would fully understand and appreciate.
What makes a true friend
True friends laugh together, are good listeners, are not judgemental, and care about the things that are important to you.
You never know when a true friend will come your way without taking some sort of risk. The risk you would be taking is getting outside of your comfort zone. Walking down the street to bring a plate of cookies to a new neighbor requires effort and bravery.
The important part of creating a meaningful friendship is that you put forth effort. That effort has the potential to blossom into something that could last a lifetime.