The year is 1994.
A dirty blonde girl with braces and an oversized T-shirt worn over bike shorts walks down a school hallway, arm slung over the shoulder of her best friend. They are in the 4th grade, and life is good. Mr. Coppes’s class is the best, and their Odyssey of the Mind team is going to the World Finals in that most cosmopolitan of global cities, Knoxville, Tennessee. The best friend had recently come over for a sleepover, and they had for some reason laughed hysterically to the point of tears when the best friend accidentally pressed the water dispenser on the new family refrigerator - one of those things that is unfathomably but so undeniably hilarious only to two nine-year-old best friends - and then they had watched I Love Lucy on Nick at Nite on the pull-out couch. This is the first friendship in the girl’s life that will endure the ages, and the girl - though she does not consciously have this thought - is learning just how rewarding it can be to have a pal at your side, through thick and thin. The girl is embarking on her first voyage aboard the SS Friendship, and it is a sweet ride indeed.
But this is only the beginning. The girl will grow older and encounter new people to bring aboard. Some will cruise along for a while and then disembark. Others will be in it for the long haul, seemingly headed for the same port. Still others will get on late but will quickly make themselves indispensable as a deckhand or in the galley or maybe doing something in the map room? Together, they will make a pretty great crew, and there will be much swabbing of the poop deck and dancing to jigs under the stars, usually to a Whitney Houston or Robyn song. For now, though, the girl is arm-in-arm with her pal in Pennsylvania, giggling down the hall.