I had this friend when I was a kid.
She moved to my city from Louisiana, I think. Her name was Grace and she joined my preschool class in the middle of the year (my mom helped her get registered and everything). The preschool fed into a private school, and that's where I went up until eighth grade and where she went up until about seventh grade. In early elementary school, there were only three Asian girls: me, her, and our other main friend. (That's only if you count me, being half Asian, as Asian, which I'm going to do in this case because no one at the time ever cared about the entire half of me that was Caucasian.) We went to the same church together, too, so we were together six days of the week. Grace lived more or less in my neighborhood, so we would usually carpool to and from school, and I remember once, on the last day of school, we vowed that we would have a playdate every single day of the summer. We didn't. Though we really would have, if it was up to us.
One time I wore my fuzzy socks into her backyard and ended up getting all these pollen twigs (or something) stuck in them, and I couldn't pull them all out, and I ended up having to throw the socks away.
One time her mom was cooking some sort of food, or maybe it was some type of medicine, and it smelled legit so bad. And her dad tested their fire alarms that day.
One time we went swimming and when we got back, her mom had us all swab our ears with q-tips and was shocked when I said I didn't do that regularly.
One time my brother and I went to her house to sleep over because our parents were going somewhere for the night. Basically as soon as they left, I started crying because I missed them but I didn't want to admit that to Grace's parents, so, when they asked me what was wrong, I said that I missed the Dumbo VHS tape that I lost. And later that night, her mom made us girls (me, Grace, and her little sister) sleep in Grace's room while Nathan had to sleep alone in a bedroom across the hall. I think we were crying because we wanted to sleep in the same room. I guess we cried a lot. But her mom wouldn't have that, so Nathan and I blinked these little flashlights we had on the ends of our keychains that our dad gave us. We just blinked the flashlights back and forth.
One time, during a sleepover at her house - the other Asian friend was there too - we decided to wake up for a midnight snack, and it turned out to actually be 6:00am. We were rummaging around in the pantry and her mother came downstairs and got lowkey mad at us. Then she made us stay awake and she made us breakfast. At 6:00am. We never tried to get midnight snacks again after that.
One time we were really mad at each other for one reason or another, and we were sitting in angsty silence when she grabbed a stuffed animal, pressed a button inside of it, and it started moving and singing 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.' And we started laughing and couldn't stop.
One time, a couple of months after I started playing violin, I took her to one of my violin lessons. And she tried it out and started taking lessons.
One time I beat her in a chair test for orchestra. One time. Because...
One time she got better than me.
And it's just been like that. And somehow, along the way, I've developed this almost instinctual disdain when I think of her. I don't know where that came from. My mom always scoffed at everything Grace did, and maybe this was spurred off something about her parents or something I really honestly don't know anything about (it could be anything, or, then again, just cause it's my mom, it could be nothing). But, basically, somehow we weren't really friends anymore. We stopped carpooling to school and to orchestra. Somewhere in sixth grade, I told someone that Grace and I were enemies. I don't know where that came from.
Maybe there are things that I'm forgetting. Maybe there was a reason. But I can't think of it.
We stayed in orchestra up until high school graduation. We did youth orchestra together, and she was usually first chair (while I was barely in the front column of first violins... and even that was just senior year). And we talked occasionally, but I felt that those conversations were fused with false enthusiasm. Maybe it's just the way she speaks to everyone. I wouldn't know, I wasn't around her long enough to tell.
But violin was her thing. She's just really good.
She's at school at Eastman now. She's doing music... violin. And I bet that she would have played anyways, but it just so happens that I'm pretty sure I was her introduction to violin. I think I was her introduction to the very instrument that her life is composed mostly of.
I just kind of find that strange.
We influenced each other a lot. But now we don't ever talk, and I really can't think of any time in which I would expect to run into her again.
But there's that.
I wonder if - if I met her today - we would be friends.
