BFFL

In 1981 I was a 13 year old 7th grader at Greenbelt Middle School. I hung out with a crowd of other girls my age who lived in my community and came from a similar background. Our favorite activities were roller skating on Friday nights, sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom and boys! We wore makeup and listened to hard rock like AC/DC and Pat Benatar. My friends and I were so cool!

Sometime after school started in the Fall, a new girl moved into our community. Stacey spoke with a Louisiana drawl. She wore not a stitch of makeup, walked like a stork and when we asked her who her favorite rock band was, she proudly responded with "The Commodores!" Stacey was not cool!

For all the coolness she lacked, Stacey made up for it with persistence. She wanted so very much to belong to our group. I was the most convenient link to the group, so Stacey took every opportunity she had to connect with me. She sat behind me in one of the classes we shared, passing me notes "Hey, how are you today?" She also lived right around the corner from me, so our paths en route to the bus stop often crossed. Eventually, we were meeting up to walk together so we could chat. We became friends.

The time came when I wanted to invite Stacey to hang out with my friends and I. When I brought this up with them, the girls in my group wanted nothing to do with Stacey. She was "not one of us." This led me to examine my values. Although I wanted to be a part of the crowd, I felt strongly that rejecting someone based on superficial characteristics was very wrong. So I made a stand. I decided that if this group of girls did not accept Stacey, then they really couldn't be good friends to me.

At first it was really hard to live with the situation, I was "blacklisted" for awhile. I dealt with some harassment. I shed some tears. Yet Stacey stood by my side through it all. After some time, the other girls came around and stopped being so mean. We all became friends at that point, but I was never as close to them as I once was. My trust and loyalty to the other girls was lost. The most important part of the situation was not what I lost, but what I found - a best friend for life.