Ms. Caldwell's Decree
A new podcast episode around the dinner table with our friends; plus, a mandated grade-school friendship.
This week on the podcast, we invite friends over for dinner and a chat. Over the course of the conversation we’ll touch on ideas of family, intimacy, and how we form the close connections that make up the most important relationships in our lives.
As I listen back to our discussion, there is a moment where we discuss the phenomenon of naming a thing to make it a thing – saying something is so and therefore, it is. I was reminded of a friend I first made in 4th grade. My teacher at the time was Ms. Caldwell, a six-foot-tall woman with a baffling collection of drugstore reading glasses and bejeweled sport whistles. She ran the after-school program at Wauka Mountain Elementary — a program I was begrudgingly very familiar with, often being the last kid picked up after a long day.
One day, soon into the new school year, Ms. Caldwell pulled me aside during after-school snack break as I choked down a disgusting raspberry-flavored juice carton and a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie. There was a new kid in school who had no friends. She said that I would become his friend. A simple decree from the giant woman with the sapphire whistle. So, without question, I became his friend.
As latchkey kids who lived in the same 1980’s-style subdivision, we spent our late-elementary and middle-school summers together riding bikes down two dangerously steep hills (so steep that one local kid tragically died when he lost control of his three-speed and fell from a neighbor’s retaining wall). My friend introduced me to Bagel Bites and Stouffer's French Bread Pizza. I got in trouble for constructing a pillow luge on his staircase, almost breaking my neck and leaving his parents’ flimsy front door permanently dented with an impression of my forehead. Fun times were had.
We remained friends until our senior year of high school. We were two very different people; up to that point, proximity helped us maintain our friendship. Trapped in rural Georgia is a tough fate. Having someone around, even someone who could be mean and judgmental at times, made the time pass for me. But there came a time when I recognized that although there is power in naming something into existence — as Ms. Caldwell did for us in 4th grade — that thing can be understood differently by different people.
My friend and I had divergent interpretations and expectations of our friendship. Our concepts of what it meant to be a friend were misaligned. The label had been placed upon us by a third party, and that made it harder for us to define our relationship on our own terms. I valued him but recognized that our arranged friendship was built on shaky ground and was ultimately not stable enough to last. The last time we spoke was a heated exchange in choir class where I boldly moved to the back row mid-rehearsal, causing a sonic imbalance in the tenor section and a schism among the seniors that never healed.
As you’ll hear in this week’s podcast, we discuss how people get close to one another, and why. Who becomes part of one’s inner circle is an alchemical combination of proximity, time, willingness, commitment, and other less definable qualities. Any individual piece is not enough.
Reflecting now on these facets of building closeness, I wonder what would have happened if I had made a different choice back then. Instead of cutting him out, I could have reminded him that we were friends. I could have offered to watch a movie at his house; rollerblade in his driveway; go to the Circle K to get sour candy and grape soda like we used to. Maybe all he needed was for me to name the thing, again. To call him my friend.
Enjoy the episode! And don’t forget to rate and review, dear friends.
And, of course, you can find this week’s soundtrack here, as always. Lots of new summer music out to bask in and enjoy.