And the Stories Begin...

Adam and I first met when he and his family moved two doors down from me on North Dresden Circle. The neighborhood, Town South, was chock full of a whole bunch of us who had gone to elementary school together since kindergarten. Adam, was starting 6th grade at a brand new school.

One of Adam's most memorable and endearing qualities was his laugh. It was like no laugh I had ever heard before. I remember trying to duplicate his laugh because all the girls would tell him they "loved his laugh". Being the girl-crazy 12 year old I was at the time, it was like I had discovered some secret button to push to get a girl to like me. It still works!

I digress...

Adam also had dimples that girls loved. I couldn't do anything about that, but I thought that if I hung around someone who had a great laugh and dimples, then maybe I'd meet some cute girls, too.

Then, I really got to know Adam. It wasn't the laugh or the dimples that people loved about him. It was his attitude. Not a whole lot bothered Adam. I can honestly say I never saw Adam get visibly angry. I never saw him get in a fight. Sure, there were the disagreements between Adam and his brother, Jim. But even then, he wasn't some big brother abusing his little brother with an iron fist. More like a fluffy pillow across the head.

I also got to know Adam's family. Adam's Dad had lived down the street from my Dad and his family in New Orleans when they were kids. How freaky is that? The cool thing about the Trowbridges was that they always sat down for dinner together...no TV, no scarfing your dinner down to jump up and watch TV, just good conversation amongst the family and anyone else who walked in the door. This was drastically different from dinner at my house. Although we always sat down at the same table for dinner, the conversation was anything but "good". I don't recall exactly when it happened, but we started watching old "Andy Griffith" re-runs on a TV we had in the kitchen near the table. Granted, that Barney Fife sure was entertaining, but it paled in comparison to sitting down at the dinner table at the Trowbridges.

News of the day, jokes, politics, religion and any other topic that we wanted to discuss was always the mainstay at the Trowbridge dinner table. And I'm talking funny stuff here...PG-13 kind of funny stuff which, when your 12, seems so mature.

So, most evenings, I would have dinner with my family, jump up after "Andy Griffith" and then tell the folks I was going to Adam's house to "study". Without knocking on the door (they had granted me "don't bother knocking" status), I'd walk in, grab a chair and then join the conversation which could consist of anything from giving Adam's Mom a hard time about burning dinner to talking about which girls had the biggest breasts in 6th grade. I think we talked about girls more than any other subject. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the topic about 83% of the time.

Speaking of dinner, it's about time for my dinner. I wish I stilled lived two doors down from the Trowbridges...maybe I can convince them to move to Houston. I like blackened food anyway!