Learning about Friendship

I have written before about moving a lot as a child, new schools every year, never having much in the way of friends.Maybe I knew that it did not pay to become attached, or maybe it took more time than a few months to start a friendship. Or maybe I just did not know how.
When I was 14 we moved to Winthrop and there, I got my "new" name, actually a nickname. And there I started to feel like I had a few friends.Not close friends but actual friends. So just before school started we moved again and again I was a stranger. 

The small Town where we moved to had  friendly people and I became friends with a small group. There was Larry, Steve, Arlene and Barb, we hung around not doing much, usually watching the older guys work on their stock race cars, the high light of the week was when we got to go watch the races. It was a comfortable feeling to feel a connection with others. I remember all of those care free days, Letting myself be open to friendship after my dad promised we would not move again. I did not realize it at the time but it was me growing stronger from that always waiting for the other shoe to drop feeling.

The the second year just before school started a new family moved to town. on the first day of school I met Penny, I will say that Larry also met Penny but that is another story.Penny and I became first class mates and then friends. I never figured it out,why we were good friends, but we were. Penny always so neat, so studious, quiet and reserved and here I was, not neat, hardly ever studied, and no one could ever say I was quiet. I was and still am a talker. I do not remember ever disagreeing on anything, we just got along.

There was a world of difference in our families also, her's were safe secure steady people, and mine, well I guess my dad flew by the seat of his pants and my mom and us children simply followed. Maybe it was the steadiness of Penny and  maybe it was the fact that I also flew by the seat of my pants and  that fact fascinated her. I know I gained in bravery and interest in different things. There was always a quiet strength that I got from her.

We never spoke of our friendship, so I have no idea if she felt the same friendship I did.Then there was the growing  relationship between Penny and Larry, and the fact that Larry was a good male friend mine , I remember sitting and talking about life and the future with Larry and slowly there was more and more mention of Penny in our conversations and soon it was clear that they were a pair. So some how my friendship with Penny and with Larry became a bonding of the two of them and me. It became an almost family feeling to me. 

They married young and started a family and a year or so later I did too. Over the years we kind of lost touch, but in the background they were my friends Luckily they are also good friends to my older brother and his wife Sue.Whenever I would see them, they never seemed to age. Now we are older and stay in contact with each other. In my minds eye they are still those young friends of mine that showed me how love grows. Now through the years, I guess I talk more to Larry then Penny, but it feels like I am speaking to both of them.They are the most together people I know, so that is the story of my friend Penny, ( and of course Larry).