My Long-Lost BFF

During the summer of 1977, my family moved to Big Spring, Texas. I started school at Kentwood Elementary a few weeks later. That's when I met Lori.

Lori remembers exactly how we first met and became friends. Which makes me feel kinda bad, because I don't. I just remember starting school and then we were friends. Lori lived a street or so over from me and I have many, many memories of us playing/spending the night at each other's houses. Her mom and my mom were our Brownie troop leaders. Life was sweet.

This was the late '70s, and Lori and I loved all things John Travolta. We could list all the movies he had been in (Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy and some romantic thing he did with Lily Tomlin called Moment by Moment. And don't forget the small part he had in Carrie.), even though we weren't allowed to see any of them. Lori was lucky enough to get her hands on the Grease soundtrack, however, and we spent hours making up dances to the songs and making our parents watch them. We talked on the phone for hours, sharing crushes and talking about which one of us might marry John Travolta. We also hung out a bit at the local TG&Y, where Lori's dad was the manager. (The coolest job ever for the dad of a friend to have. We used to walk around in there like we owned the place.)

We must have also spent some time at a swimming pool in Big Spring, because every time I've heard Blondie's "Heart of Glass" during the last 30 years, I have a flashback to hanging out with Lori at a pool with a bunch of other kids. I guess the song used to play over the loudspeaker there.

I had other friends in Big Spring, but Lori was up high on a pedestal above all the others. She would have been my top friend on Myspace, if it had existed back then. Then something sad happened -- something that would probably be the most traumatic event of my childhood. My family moved away at the beginning of third grade. I knew why we had to move, and as a minister's wife now, I understand it even more. The church where my dad worked as youth minister was not working out so well. But it was a difficult move nevertheless.

As fate would have it, Lori's family moved in right down the street from our house the very week we moved away.

I made friends in the new town, but none of them were like Lori. McDonald's came out with a commercial around that time called "Best Friends" and it showed these two girls doing everything together and eventually sharing a sundae at McDonald's. The girls reminded me of Lori and me. I hated that commercial. It just reminded me of the fact that I no longer had a best friend I could hang out with every day.

Lori's family moved around a lot for a few years, and for a short time she lived 20 minutes away from me. I think that picture is from that time. I broke my arm the summer after fourth grade and it looks like we're at Lori's house. We got together when we could, but then they moved again. And my family moved far away to Beaumont, Texas.

I did see Lori again a couple of times, the last time during the summer after 10th grade. I found her again in the late '90s (this story is starting to sound a lot like what she wrote about us on her blog a while back) and just recently, found her again. She's now my Facebook and Myspace friend and I talked to her on the phone the other day. It was so great to hear her voice and listen to the same laugh she's had since first grade.

Lori lives in Boston now. We're hoping someday soon we can get together again. I'm pretty sure we're both over John Travolta, but we still have a lot of other things in common. Hey, maybe we'll even get matching clothes again!

Little Church-Owned Houses... for You and Me

We closed on the house this morning! On the way to the title company, Chad and I were talking about the different houses we lived in growing up. So I decided to blog about mine.

Birch Street, Lovington, New Mexico: We lived here from when I was born until just after my 3rd birthday. I was little, but I remember a lot about the house. I remember the dark blue carpet and the way the house was laid out with the living room in the front, the kitchen behind it and the bedrooms down a hallway to the right. I remember watching Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights while my mom rolled my hair up in those pink sponge curlers. I remember my brother Brian breaking his arm in the front yard. I remember running around the backyard with Snoopy, our puppy.

Highland Street, Hobbs, New Mexico: My dad got a youth minister job at Taylor St. Church of Christ, and that church had a parsonage. It was one of the nicest houses we ever lived in, and the only four-bedroom house we had. Brian and I were big fans of The Brady Bunch at the time, and I remember thinking that if we had an Alice, she could live in the extra bedroom. I was three and four when we lived there.

700 Trailing Heart, Roswell, New Mexico: We never knew what "Trailing Heart" meant, but this house was cool. It was the parsonage owned by Country Club Road Church of Christ, where my dad was the youth minister. The church building was fairly new, and for some reason the elders were afraid the youth group was going to tear it up. So the church paid to turn our double garage into a giant activity room so the teens would hang out there instead of the church building. It was awesome. It was carpeted and had a (8-track!) stereo and a ton of games. On the last day of school that year, my kindergarten class took a field trip to the park that was right across the street from our house. It started pouring down rain and as the class was running for the bus, I told our teacher that we could just go over to my house. "Are you sure that's OK?" she asked. I assured her that it was, and you can imagine my mom's horror when my entire kindergarten class showed up unannounced at the front door. We had fun though -- sitting in a circle in the big room playing Duck, Duck, Goose.

2713 Carol, Big Spring, Texas: We moved to Big Spring so my dad could be the youth minister at 14th and Main Church of Christ. The church had a parsonage on Cindy Lane, but it needed some work so the church rented us a house on Carol Street until the other house was ready. Apparently, the rent house also needed some work and the elders' wives who met us at the house the day we moved were horrified at the condition it was in. I didn't notice, though. The house was huge and I could make a full circle in it on my Big Wheel.

2502 Cindy Lane, Big Spring, Texas: Finally the house was ready and we moved over to Cindy during my 2nd grade year. I loved this house, too. It had fluffy yellow carpet and my best friend lived one street over. When we moved away in the middle of 3rd grade, I missed this house more than any of the other houses.

103 North 3rd St, Lovington, New Mexico: Yep, back to Lovington so my dad could be the YM at 3rd and Central Church of Christ for the second time. We lived in the parsonage right across the street from the church. There was a separate building in our backyard where the teens met for class on Sunday mornings. So my dad walked out the back door across the backyard every Sunday morning to teach class. This was a small house, but we liked it. I remember watching Dallas on Friday nights with my mom in the living room, and feeling very modern because we were now living in the 1980s.

805 West Gore, Lovington, New Mexico: This was the other house the church owned. The preacher and his family had been living in it, but they built a house and moved, leaving the Gore Street house open for us. This was another nice house. I lived there for 4th, 5th and 6th grade. Over the years, I've met several other children of former ministers from 3rd and Central who lived in this house. One had found where I had written "DEANA WAS HERE" in my closet and he said for years he had wondered who Deana was every morning as he was picking out his clothes.

4060 Redwood Drive, Beaumont, Texas: Ridgewood Church of Christ in Beaumont had no parsonage, so for the first time in 12 years, we bought a house. Beaumont was my dad's hometown and we moved in right down the street from his parents/my grandparents. This was the house that I felt the most at home in. I moved in as an 11-year-old kid and moved out as a 22-year-old married woman. After Brian left for college, I moved into his room where I had my own bathroom. This was especially handy for the nights my boyfriend sneaked up to the house so we could kiss through my bathroom window. My parents moved to Houston in 1994, and Chad and I made one more trip to Beaumont to get my last bit of stuff from the house. I cried when we drove away.

Chad and I have lived in eight apartments/houses/townhouses since we got married in 1993. Our realtor just came by and gave me the keys for the house we closed on today. Hopefully it will be the last house on my list for a long while.