I can’t remember when we first met. Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true. 

I remembered seeing him playing outside; we couldn’t have been more than three or four years old.

I come from the kind of small town where your preschool classroom is the same group of friends that walk the graduation stage together at high school. Our preschool teacher who once watched us waddle around in her classroom came too, and she smiled at us all from the front row. It’s supportive that way, our town has always been like that. 

It’s funny, I don’t remember ever talking to him. Even over those early years, playing at each other’s houses and kayaking up and down the Chesapeake Bay, it’s hard to pinpoint one conversation, one moment that could define our friendship. But to everyone else, we were inseparable.  Somehow never in the same classes, yet together at every bell. 

He called me during my first few weeks at college. The next day, my friend next door told me how we had woken her up with our laughter. After all, we caught up, chatting about the engineering program that he had set his heart on, and now no longer liked, and when we would see each other next.