I LOST MY BEST FRIEND ON VACATION

I lost my Best Friend on Vacation



I lost my Best Friend on Vacation

“Do not walk in front of me, I may not follow.

Do not walk behind me, I may not lead.

Just walk beside me and be my friend. (Albert Camus)”.

Looking down the memory lane, I still remember the time while I sat in the classroom of St. Andrew's Episcopal and Miss Kelly walked in the class and wrote an essay topic on the chalkboard. It was my first essay in the third grade about my best friend. I remember starting it with the, now very common, phrase which was how everyone has many friends, but there's this one friend who just means so much more than the rest. That one particular friend is the best friend. I wrote about Ely, my neighborhood friend in Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. Surprisingly the teacher liked my essay so much that she graded me an A+ on that essay.

Ely's family came from Zakaki, Limassol, Cyprus a few months after we moved in the new neighborhood. Her dad was a doctor, and so was mine, which is one reason why we started hanging out a lot and became friends. Our moms used to leave us with the babysitter and go to their work. Her actual name was Eleftheria Georgiadou, it is funny how I could not pronounce or ever spell her name correctly, so I'd just call her Ely. I did not actually like Ely in the beginning since she always take my candies and so I'd pull her bushy, long, brown hair, and she had start crying. As we spent time almost every day together, we became friends. She was the first girl I kissed.

Later when I got promoted to the fourth grade Ely joined my school, and we became not only neighborhood buddies but also school pals. During the recess, Ely and I would share our lunch with each other, race in the playground, hang on the parallel bars and take turns to swing. We'd stick around with each other all the time in school as though we were the conjoined twins. We were a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Mississippi had a humid subtropical climate with long summers and short, mild winters. The temperature called for a daily dip into the pool in summers. Ely and I would swim every day in my pool, and it turned out that she swam better than me. We'd go up our tree house and watch our favorite TV show, Blue's Clues. I'd teach her how to skip rope, but she just would not ever get it. This one time back in the fifth grade most of our neighbors were over for a brunch at my place and Ely tried skipping in front of everyone. When she jumped her skirt fell off. She ran crying inside, and I went for her trying to cheer her up.

Days, weeks, and months passed and both of us grew through the time ...