I've been surfing about, reading others' thoughts on friends and friendship.

(Don't hate me revpals, but my sermon was done last night, while I had an empty house.)

So, I'm thinking back in time to friends I had when I was a girl. My best friend in elementary school through high school had the same first and middle names as me ( a very, very common first/middle name combo from the early 60s; if you have my first name, chances are you have my middle name, too)and her last name began with the same first letter, so we sat next to each other in those alphabetized classrooms that were all the rage in the 60s and 70s. We had the same long, straight parted-down-the-middle hair that was the fashion then. Mine was muddy brown, and hers was golden blonde.

Other than that, our lives couldn't have been more different. Her parents were divorced when we were in the third grade. She was the only person I knew who had divorced parents. She and her brother and mother lived in a lovely ranch-style home that was situated on some property that her grandmother owned. It was the prettiest house I had ever seen as a child, and the cleanest.

If I rode the bus home with her after school, we were there before anyone else, and we were unsupervised even when we were all of nine years old. I never told my mother this detail, because I know my mother would never let me go there after school if she knew we were alone without an adult. But Pretty Blonde's mother worked outside the home. That was another first for me. I didn't know anyone else's mother who wasn't home when the children got off the school bus. But PB's mom worked for the local rural electrical cooperative; she was the "extension agent". I found out later that the "extension agent" was the person at the cooperative who wrote the Homemaking column for the cooperative's brochures, and gave energy-saving tips on the local radio show. PB told me that their home was considered the energy conservation "Show Home" for the county, and that's why it had to be so clean all the time, because it was constantly being photographed for this reason or that reason, or sometimes the local Congressman came over for dinner.

I just know that I wasn't allowed to wear shoes inside the house, that toilet paper was rationed, and that when I stayed overnight, Pretty Blonde Mother washed my clothes while I slept. Every morning, at the foot of the bed, a neatly folded pile of yesterday's school clothes, clean-smelling and fluffy (my mother never used fabric softener) was waiting for me to stuff back inside my overnight case.

Oh, and that I was never,ever allowed to walk into the living room.

Pretty Blonde's family had two Christmas trees; a "casual" one in the tv room, which was decorated with greens and blues that perfectly matched the plaid furniture in that room, and a "formal" tree that was adorned with white and silver, to coordinate with the cream-colored furniture. Once when I was about ten, it was Christmas time, and I walked into the living room in my stocking feet to admire the tree. Pretty Blonde Mother saw me there and yelled at me to get my filthy self out of her showcase room. I was stunned, but too embarrassed to tell my friend what had happened. I just stayed away from her house for awhile.

Although PB and I were very good friends, her mother never really accepted me. It's as if I wasn't good enough. Once in high school, when PB stayed over night at my noisy, messy house out in the country--where if we opened the windows we could smell the hogs next door--her mother sent towels with her, as if we didn't own towels or something. She accidentally left a hand towel at my house; I washed it and I took it to school the next Monday. I gave it to Pretty Blonde Mother (she was by now the Home Ec teacher at our school). She delined to take it, saying it was "ruined." "Our towels are plush. This is rough and scratchy. I don't know who that belongs to." But I knew it was theirs, because we didn't own any hand towels. I took it home but hid it from my mother. I didn't want her to be as embarrassed as I was.

I was happy to have Pretty Blonde as a friend, and glad that she wasn't like her mother. I've lost touch with her over the years. I know she became a nurse after attending the rival State University, but I don't know if she's married or has children.

Her mother still lives in a Show Home, but has divorced twice since our hgh school graduation.