This weekend I was able to attend the wedding reception of my very first and one of my best childhood friends - Alyssa Rhodes (now Andrus). We started playing together when we were only two and three years old. We lived down the street from each other for four years, but in that short span of time we spent LOTS of time together doing what preschool and kindergarten age kids in the 90's did best:
Fighting over My Little Ponies
Watching Little Mermaid and Cinderella over and over again
Recording our voices on my Fisher Price tape recorder
Lots of playing pretend (house, hair salon - including actually cutting our hair, library, store, etc.) In fact I have a tape where we recorded ourselves playing house and I assigned us to be the mom and sister - but we had no dad because he died of AIDS. I must have been listening to too much news, yikes!
Getting in trouble together. Once when we were really little we drew all over ourselves with markers. When my mom came in and discovered us, before she could get angry I started to sing the Primary song, "if you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay..." We also enjoyed making prank calls and definitely got reprimanded for calling 911.
When I moved to a different part of Salt Lake and then to Oregon, we still made sure to have sleep-overs during my visits and wrote each other lots of letters on Lisa Frank stationary. When I was nine I even named my first pet goldfish after her.
March 1990 - Alyssa age four, me age three
My fourth birthday party (Halloween-themed of course)
Isn't it crazy how some memories stick in your mind? I can even still remember her phone number. Wow, she made a big impact on my childhood - thanks for being such a great best friend Alyssa Rhodes!
It makes me laugh so hard that the dad died of AIDS in your game of house! You were destined for public health your whole life.
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