My parents moved to the other side of Waltham when I was twelve years old. Caroline and I sat on our steps and cried. She was to be left behind with the neighborhood girls who always chose to ignore her. Anita, one of the girls, gained pleasure from throwing rocks at Caroline. This made Caroline so mad. She claimed that someday she would have her revenge.
There seemed to be no way for us to keep in touch at such a young age so we lost contact for years.
My husband George and I were married for eight years when we settled in Natick Mass. with our five children. Much to my surprise and delight I discovered that Carol, {as she was called now} and her husband Norman lived just two blocks away from us. We immediately renewed our friendship. The four of us along with our children had many happy years together.
Carol and I loved shopping even though most of the time we didn't have much money to spend. We were considered to be adults but we used to do silly fun things when we shopped OR pretended to shop.
This is an example:
Every so often the two of us would buy a five dollar glass diamond stone ring. The sparkle only lasted long enough to play a joke on our husbands or friends. One time we actually played the joke on each other and got away with it! Really and Truly!!
One day after just purchasing one of these treasures Carol spotted rock throwing Anita at a counter waiting for her purchase to be wrapped. "Here's my chance she grinned" and made it a point to say hello. I knew she had somthing up her sleeve as she never seemed to get over the childhood harrassment. Carol knew her brand new diamond was shiny and hard to miss, so she proceeded to wave her ring hand around while she and Anita were talkiing. She even placed her hand on the counter right next to Anita's. I knew what she was up to. All of a sudden I knew I had to get her atttention so I started waving my hand and tried to make her stop the antics. She thought I was mimicking what she was doing. What she hadn't noticed was, while she was waving her hand around, the stone had fallen out!!!! I can still see her face when she dicovered that her joke had backfired. I said "That'll teach Ya"! She replied, "Guess I better start behavin". She didn't, because Chapter Three was about to begin.