It's about time, Facebook

So I've been on facebook for about a year now. Most of my tech-savvy relatives have managed to find me, a couple of my friends from my adult life and a fair number of old classmates. And more than a few people who went to school with me and are friends of friends, but who I honestly don't recall AT ALL. Who I haven't found on facebook are old friends who were really friends. Nobody that I actually cared about ever getting in touch with.

And then this week I found my BFF's from both middle school and high school.

My middle school BFF moved before we started high school and we lost touch. It was nice to say "hi" and see where she's at now.

But I was even more excited to find my HS BFF. She was even the maid of honor at my wedding, but we had a falling out several years ago and it has been almost 10 years since we've spoken.

We were about as opposite as you can get. She blond, blue-eyed, short and curvy; me dark-haired, taller, thinner and straight as a board. We met in freshman biology, and most of the other girls didn't like her because she was the type who wore her clothes too tight and was prone to steal your boyfriend. I was far more conservative and didn't draw the animosity that she did. We had one or two spats over boys, but for the most part it was a non-issue. We were so different that the boys who were attracted to one of us wasn't interested in the other--and we generally didn't go for the same guys.

Most of the trouble that I got into in high school involved her. The most memorable event was when we were 16 and she had a fight with her boyfriend, a college student living in a college town about 30 miles away from us. She decided that she was going to get drunk and have it out with him. I didn't drink at all in high school and did not condone her behavior, but I wasn't going to let her drink and drive. So she grabbed her 4-pack of wine coolers and I grabbed her car keys and off we went.

Boyfriend was not happy to see us, and shooed us into a back room when another girl showed up. Yeah, that didn't go over well. BFF became belligerent and he and I literally carried her out to the car. I locked her in, jumped in and took off. She was pissed and screaming at me. It was dark and I couldn't find her headlights, so I ran over a parking block trying to get the heck out of there. She took the opportunity to jump out of the car and start running back to the boyfriend's apartment. I tackled her and dragged her kicking and screaming back to her car.

At that point I realized that I had seriously messed up her car when I hit the parking block. The car wouldn't turn left--and I had to drive the 30-mile trip back home without making a left turn. I also couldn't stop, for fear that she would jump out and I would have to chase her down again.

We had my dad look at the car the next day, and it turned out that I bent the frame. Oops. Of course, we never told anybody how it actually happened, and we remained BFF's for years after that.

There was definitely some craziness, and we disagreed about a lot, but in hindsight I realize that she is the only friend I ever had to whom I could tell anything and not be judged. She might disagree with me and she would certainly tell me so--but she wouldn't judge me or think less of me. Friends like that are hard to come by.