Friendships are the BEST!

Have you ever been spanked in public?  I think it's against the law now, even in private...  But boy oh boy, it set me straight!

Oh and I'm not talking about my mom!  Although she spanked me when I deserved it too..  This was my best friends mother and I was probably 4 or 5.  I'd embarrassed her really bad at the grocery store by being extremely rude to someone.  I so totally deserved it!  I'm not going to tell you what I did, because I'm really ashamed of my behavior that day...

And that best friend is still a good friend, even though we don't see each other very often.  She still lives in my hometown and I make a point to stop in where she works when I'm there to say hi.

Her name is Val too.  But back then we were both Valeries.  Her 6 siblings were roughly the same ages as my 6 siblings so our families got together a lot and everyone had someone to hang out with.  All the girls in that family had names starting with Vs and the boys all had names starting with Ws. 

We stayed overnight at each others houses fairly often and in the middle of the night, I'd wake up in their living room in my sleeping bag confused.  They had a tiny trap door in the ceiling of the room and I'd lay there for a few minutes wondering where I was and why I was sleeping on the ceiling...  Kind of an Alice in Wonderland type feeling...

These were the friends who we helped dig an illegal swimming pool in their front yard.  I think I posted about that once upon a time.  Yep - found it. HERE

One of Val's brothers had the bounciest bed upstairs and when the brothers weren't home, she and I would literally bounce off the slanted ceiling of that room.  SO FUN!

As the years went by, her dad got sick and he had to sleep on a hospital bed in the living room so I didn't sleep over much anymore.  The first Christmas eve program after his death was really hard on all those kids and all the girls of that family sobbed throughout the whole service.

They moved a few years after that and didn't live next to the abandoned mink farm anymore.  Which was a bummer because the property there was so fun to explore.  But they were still in town and within a block of a store that had candy!  So different than living down a paved road or a gravel road 3 miles from any where, like where I lived. 

As we got into middle and high school, our friendship sort of waned, if that's the right word...  They didn't go to church with us anymore and I had started school at our church school.  We each had new sets of friends. 

But whenever I see her, she gives me the firmest hug as if we're still the besties we used to be.  Laughing and talking as if we'd seen each other yesterday and just carrying on the same conversations.  We're friends on FB nowadays too so it's a little easier to keep up on what she's up to and I can show off pics of my grandson to her whenever I want!

A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17