Old friends

Recently the 27th birthday of my known-the-longest friend passed.

Her name is Laura, my name is Ashley, and there are several photos of us standing underneath Laura-Ashley store canopies. One of these was taken in Finland!

We met in kindergarden and got to be friends when we, or maybe our moms, discovered that we lived in the same neighborhood and had a lot in common. Family friends, you could say. We have a lot of memories together, despite the fact that her family moved away when we were 6 or 7, and we haven't lived within 5 states of each other since then.

One of my favorites is how we used to talk about how we needed her little sister and my little brother to get married so we could be sisters, and we'd execute our little 10-year-old romance plots on the unsuspecting second-graders. Fun times :)

Friends are special, yes, but there's something about old friends. I can say I've known Laura for 22 years. That's a long time! She's one of the dearest people in my life, too, in part for that longevity. We have that kind of friendship that involves not seeing each other for long stretches of time, even years, and then being in the same room and settling in like we are together all the time.

Do you have a friend like that?  How old is your 'oldest' friendship?