Good Friends, Bad Boys

The new skatepark behind the Rock Hall was full of boys on boards and wheels, each one trying to be way cooler than the next kid.

My dearest friend, Susan, and I took our twelve year old sons, Brian and Sean, downtown today to check it out. (In my new Celica...see earlier post.) It was a great spot. They practiced their stunts for a couple of hours, and begged us to bring them back. While the boys busied themselves on the ramps and rails, we caught up on the events of the last few days.

The best thing about best friends is, no matter how often we see each other, we never run out of conversation. Susan and I mostly talk about people; our friends, our families, our neighbors, men, our relationships, men, our frustrations, men,...things that annoy us.

I met Susan at St Louis Elementary School in Cleveland Heights, after we both received notes from the principal concerning our boys, during the very first week of kindergarten.
Her son Sean, and my son Brian, were sent to the office for a playground incident involving a much bigger boy, pushing, shoving, much mud, and washing each others hair in the restroom. They have remained partners in crime ever since.

Parents of 'good children' can never experience the close bonds that the parents of challenging children can. While they brag to each other about the straight "A's", flawless piano recitals, and brilliant science fair projects, we share tales of the last parent teacher conference, what scary substance, which used to be food, we discovered under a bed, and whose kid got the most detentions this week.

Oddly enough, the very first time we met at a parent/teacher night, we didn't click. I thought she was stand-offish, and she thought I was a snob. Shared tribulation stripped away pretense, allowing us to recognize each other as kindred spirits.

Thank goodness for bad boys.