Let's Be Pals

I've always been quite adept at making new friends. "Friends" being a quite loose term, which includes those that I don't really care for but they like me enough to let me eat lunch with them. Which I haven't done since... end of freshman year? Beginning of sophomore year.

I suppose that ability was honed due to the fact that I had new friends every year up until junior high. Most elementary school kids did. My best friends changed with every year, none of us were able to retain that closeness we once had when we had different classes. Permanence was never expected, as it was relatively uncommon.

So whenever I see best pals that claim that they've been bosom buddies since grade 2, I am an naturally impressed. They seem to have acquired something that I will never have. I'm losing my first best friends in high school.

At least, they're drifting away from me. And it's not too much of a surprise. I only have one class with one of them and lunch with two. They have cars and cool parents and fun time while I have to take the school bus straight home and a strict mother that will never let me enjoy being a teenager. I won't get a car until I'm 17, which is a good 4 months into senior year. Thanks bad economy and high insurance rates.

My mother claims that it's not really a loss when I see them for half an hour every day. Uh, it is a loss, considering that I would see them for several hours every day during school and a couple hours once a week AFTER school. It is a loss when they talk about adventures that they've had and inside jokes they share secret smiles at and talk about new best friends that they've acquired and leave me to the side. At least, that's how it feels like.

But it's my fault. Not theirs. I can't help it if they want to make their high school memories memorable and have the means to do so. I can't help it if I want to make my high school years memorable and fail to have the ability to do so. I can't help it if my mom is just too strict and just too smothering and just too incapable of letting me go. I can't help it if I live too far away, if I have no transportation, if I get upset because I feel so insignificant because they'll forget important things for me but don't care if I do things for them on their days.

"Haha, you just gave me a piece of paper for my birthday!"
Yeah, you didn't give or say anything on mine.