She was two years my senior, I was 8. WE were the best of friends for about a month. We made a notebook full of collages and sayings that expressed our utter devotion to one another and called it the "best friend's book". I would spend days on end at her house. We shared custody of a troll doll named Sammy whom we had kiped from the grocery store. first kiping of our lives, ever! She liked to fix my hair and put makeup on my face. She once organized a fashion show with all of the neighborhood kids. I wore a pink taffeta dress that was my fanciest, and walking down the living room runway, i was told to pause at their antique bubble gum dispenser and pout. We toasted pumpkin seeds, we hung out in her mom's kidnergarten class room a lot. We fake smoked rolled up band-aids. We watched tons of television, we experimented with her computer sound recorder. "Ben Gay for all my life" was a real funny joke. Her room was sea foam green and rose pink, and so sophisticated. Anywho, before I forget why I was reminded of this: One afternoon in her basement pantry, in a fit of who knows what, I opened a bag of chocolate chips and shoved handful after handful into my mouth. I would half-way masticate the chips, and spit them into my open palm, only to smear the gooze all over my face and neck and shoulders. By the time I was finished, I was completely, really completely, coated with spitty chocolate sauce and completely satisfied with myself. Maren was horrified, and so was her mother.