Describe a favorite childhood friend and something you did with her or him. (Mom)

Favorite childhood friend; Eric Milton Carter

Eric lived near me for a while in the Oaks. Our neighborhood didn’t have many kids at all. The other kids were older than us so we mainly played together a lot.
My home sat in a quiet neighborhood. On one side of the house were woods that I used to play in and make forts with all the leaves, branches and trees. On the other side was a neighbor’s house but there was a good distance between our yards. Behind my home was a cornfield. Eric and I used to love to run and hide in the cornfield for hours. It was a wonder we never got lost and couldn’t find our way back to my yard. There was a path that we could walk along that separated the homes from the cornfield that was always, during season, full of wild red and black berries that we loved to pick and eat. At one end of the path there was a hill that during the winter after it snowed we loved to take our sleds and sled for hours until we were frozen and had to go home.
Below our neighborhood were more cornfields too. There was a very small stream that flowed half way to the neighboring farm. We used to go and walk barefoot through the stream, throw rocks and build small dams to divert the water. Most of my memories were of us playing in the woods and cornfields or each other’s homes as much as we possibly could.
Every once and a while the older kids would get together with us and play a version of war. We would pick teams; one team would run and hide in trees, under leaves, in outside sheds or buildings. Basically anywhere we could be hidden. The other team would be responsible for finding us and capturing us until all the other kids were found. That was always fun since we had so many places we could run and hide for hours.
Unfortunately, when I was in 8th or 9th grade, Eric’s Dad got a job promotion and they moved out of state and I never heard from him again.
During that time, Eric was a good friend, but there were also 2 other good friends of mine. One was named Muffit and after Muffit came Tuffy. Yep, you probably already know, I love cats. These two cats were my buddies all of the time. I don’t remember stories of Muffit except her being around and following me to the bus stop in the mornings and finding me when I was walking home in the evenings. I just remember really loving her. Tuffy came after she died.
After Muffit died my Mother told me I could get another cat. One of my friends had 2 female cats that were having kittens and they told me that I could have one of the kittens when they were ready to leave their Mothers. One cat delivered her kittens a while before the second. We went to go see the kittens but there was only 1 kitten left. Our friends told us that he was a mean kitten and nobody wanted him because he was mean to the other kittens and very rough. Unfortunately, the other female cat had delivered her kittens but they had a few weeks until they could leave their Mother. I couldn’t wait for a kitten so I took the rough little cat. For weeks I kept trying to hold and love the cat. He would scratch me whenever I got him in my arms and I paid the price. I had scratches all over my body on a daily basis but I was determined that he was going to be my cuddly cat. After a few months of this, I think he resigned himself and gave up the battle. He became the most loving cat and let me do anything I wanted to him. I remember dressing him up in my Cabbage Patch doll clothes, hanging him from a back pack off the laundry line and spending hours with him also running through the corn field. When I put him in the back pack and hung him off the laundry line he would stay in there for hours until I rescued him and let him out. I really do think he liked it and he made me very happy throughout our time together.
These friends are my best childhood friends and memories.