Carrie: The one you keep.

When I was a kid, we moved. A lot. As in every year. My entire life, I've never lived in a house. I didn't have to switch schools every time, sometimes it was just down the street. I went to three junior high schools, and the second one, Hopkins, was hellish. I hated it. I'd come home crying because it was so bad. So my mom and I moved, one last time, to Wayzata. I already knew some people from Wayzata, because they went to my church and we were in confirmation together.

I moved to Wayzata with one month left in 9th grade (which was junior high at the time, not high school). I met some people, including Carrie, I believe we went to the 9th grade semi-formal together as part of a big group. However, I didn't really get to know Carrie until 10th grade French class. There were several of our friends in that French class, and we drove Madame Wallace batty. She was the best teacher ever. Man I miss that lady. Anyway, I will never forget the day we learned how to say someone is nice, and Carrie pointed at me and said "Elle est tres Sympa." She was my best friend from there on out.

Along with our other friends, we had some adventures. Carrie once said that Eric Lund had a nice butt, and the rest of us decided that Eric Lund was going to be our friend, and Carrie was going to date him. He was, and she did, all through high school, and they were engaged our first year of college.

We did a lot of drinking in high school, I know, I'm such a purist, you're all shocked, but yes, we did. One night, we were drinking at Adam's (we were always drinking at Adam's) and we were sitting in the crawl space under the three-season porch and Adam reached up and punched out the light bulb. Carrie screamed louder than I've ever heard anyone scream in my entire life.

One year for Halloween, I think we were 15? Maybe 16? Carrie and I dressed up in her Grandmothers old clothes (Carrie's mom died when she was young, and Carrie was adopted and raised by her grandparents) and went trick-or-treating. But first, her grandfather videotaped us. Somewhere there is very embarassing footage of me flipping Carrie over backwards and subsequently being attacked by her dog. All for the love of fake Birckenstock sandals. (To this day I'm afraid of small weiner dogs).

One thing that was always mine and Carrie's "thing" was the parade of homes. I don't know how popular this is around the country, but in the fall and spring there is a showcase all over the metro area where you can go into model homes and look around. We liked to find the most expensive ones and assign rooms to our friends. "This is Carrie and Eric's wing, here's where John and Maureen will be, here's Dawn and Mark..."etc. Now that we're older, it's harder to find time to go, and have only been able to go once in the past few years, and now it looking at homes in the same neighborhood and saying: "you can have this house, and I'll live down the street." No more sharing houses for us, we're adults now and can live on our own!

After freshman year of college, Carrie and I lost touch for a few years. When I was a senior, and had moved home to do my student teaching, I called Carrie. We met for dinner at Aculpulco in Stillwater and caught up. She had had a baby boy, Dominic, and he was pretty darned new at the time. Since being back together, we've escaped her from a harmful relationship, she's gone back to college to go from a LPN to an RN, I've started grad school, she's gotten engaged, and we've mourned her grandmother, (we mourned grandpa in high school).

Carrie's truly my oldest friend, and I'm not giving her up again for any reason. She's happy, and that makes me happy. No one I know has gone through more in her life, and no one I know deserves the happiness more than Carrie.