Facebook Friends, a few at a time

I thought of a good blog topic, but it will be a long one, so I am going to post it piece by piece. I printed up my list of Facebook friends, and I am going to write about them. I divided the list up into times of my life, and certainly people weave around into and out of the lists. Some on my list have sadly passed on, and others just have left Facebook, I think. I will begin with an apology if I skip someone, and I will end it weeks from now with same apology. Some of you have made a greater impression on my life than I on yours, and that is really ok. I hate some of your politics, and that is ok too. I can get passed all of that. I would sit and have a beer with any and all of you. If it is good beer, that is. My preference is Pilsner if anyone is taking notes.

The first section is “First and Longest.” I was going call it Oldest, but I thought that would get me in trouble. Hahaha

Randi Schott Falle is the friend on Facebook I have had the longest. I think we go back to second or third grade, Taft Elementary. I think Randi says we met at Wilcox school in first grade though. She may be right. I remember being so envious because she had a canopy bed. She introduced me to ginger, honestly. We were in the general store in Greenfield Village buying candy sticks, and she bought ginger. I had never heard of ginger before, so I got one too. To this day ginger flavor and scent are among my favorites. I stood up in Randi’s wedding when she married Gary. Side note, and I am not sure I can really put it here, but Gary was the one who introduced me to that magic herb. Grin.

Jan Brenner Alpert and I became friends in fifth grade, Coolidge Elementary. Livonia was really growing in those years and I went to four elementary schools without ever moving houses. One year my mom had three kids in three different elementary schools. Jan and I were talking the other day about how many times we went to the Livonia Cinemas. One day we saw the double feature of David and Lisa and Lord of the Flies. We left so depressed that is a wonder we did not just walk into traffic on Seven Mile. To this day Jan and I get together a few times a year to laugh and do a bit of shopping. We are in constant contact via texts and email. Jan’s dad use to take us to Tiger baseball games where we would sit in the bleachers and watch the drunks more than we watched the games. Once a guy was so drunk he got naked, and it was the highlight of the summer. Lol Jan lost her husband Gary last August, within the year of me losing Ann.
Linda Holton Little is a childhood friend who became my cousin. Figure that one out. Lol. The families were so close that we called each other’s parents aunt and uncle, and then my mom married her uncle, and we became actual cousins. So we became family, sort of, after being family sort of. Linda is in all the dancing school pictures I have posted on this blog. Once when we were children, we laid down on I696. It was just being built, and we knew we one day wanted to say we had laid down on a major highway. I was always jealous of Linda because she was the only girl in the family she had her own bedroom, whereas I had to share with a sister.

Linda Berry Hofmeyer is actually my sister-in-law Debbie’s cousin. Small world. Linda and Debbie’s aunt lived next door to me, and I got to know Linda when she would visit. She lived only five or six blocks away, so being friends was within walking distance. Her sister Lisa Berry Bobinski is one of my Facebook friends also. Linda, remember the winter hats we used to style as wigs? Lol I went on vacation with Linda’s family, and I had two of the best weeks of my life.

Judy Gothelf Dobranski was my seventh-grade physical education teacher at Bryant Junior High. I adored her from the moment I met her, as did everyone else. I am sure some of you reading right now are going, “Oh wow, I remember her!” I am not sure what it was, but think I would have taken a bullet for that woman. We have kept up all these years, and just had lunch together two weeks ago. She has not changed, and if you ran into her into her you would know her on sight. If I had to analyze it, I would say she was the first adult who really liked me for me when she did not have to. Make sense? And now we are about the same age. Funny how that happens. Judy lost her husband the month after I lost Ann. Love you Judy.

During those junior high years, I met other friends that are still hard-core friends today. Seems like in those years I connected so deeply.

Francine Tompkins….Fran oh Fran. How many detentions would we have missed had we not formed a fast friendship? When we were in eighth grade I woke her dog, and he bit my face. But that is a story for another time. By the time we were in ninth grade we were not allowed to be in any classes together. The school was successful in breaking up a beautiful, if not naughty friendship, and in high school we hung with totally different crowds. The school was better for it, I am sure. Once we pretended we were playing strip poker just to entice John Rice (even rhymes) through Fran’s upstairs bedroom window. Fran, it is also to be noted, had an air-conditioned sheet. Seriously. Fran has discovered she is an artist, and a great one at that.

Maureen Davidson Petrucci was the third musketeer with Fran and I. She never seemed to get in the trouble Fran and I did though. Why was that? I do not think Maureen is on Facebook any longer, so she will not see this, but she did make up a disease, Hanging Pelvisitis. We had the custodian convinced. What good times we had. Maureen was and is an artist, and for a project once, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when sugar cost a fortune, Maureen and I made a southern plantation out of sugar cubes. Heaven knows what it cost our parents, who would do anything if it was a school project.
Diane Kaloustain Sproull and I were really close in ninth grade when we were hot shit cheerleaders. We were roommates for a while at Eastern Michigan University, but then drifted. In the last few years, we have reconnected, and we have a lot in common. She and her husband Greg Sproull have been great support.

I think that takes me through junior high. If I missed anyone, I probably put you in the high school section, which will be written next.

One last junior high story…and I will not mention the girl’s name. She was famous for two things…one she stuffed her bra so much that by the end of the day she had one big boob in the middle of her chest. Secondly, one day during the above-mentioned Cuban Missile Crisis, she jumped out of her desk, shouted, “We are all going to die!” and ran out of the room.

Another quickie. Helen Fowler, who left us far too soon, was getting frustrated that our algebra teacher was not coming to her desk, though she kept raising her hand. Helen was a good sized girl, tall and sturdy, and in that frustration jammed her fist in the air, at the same time the teacher was leaning down to her (neither saw each other), connecting fully with his jaw and knocking him out. She jumped up and ran out of the door screaming, “I killed him!”

Gosh I loved school.