How did you meet?

Many friendships have begun with some kind of auspicious beginning that foreshadows the greatness that is to come. For example, um.

Like that time I was playing Devil May Cry, and then the Alastor sword came out of nowhere and stabbed Dante, and then there was blood everywhere and he just kind of lifted himself up through the sword instead of pulling it out, and then it was like JESUS WHAT IS YOUR RIB CAGE MADE OF, DELICIOUS FLAN? but then he grabbed Alastor and there was lightning and then it was like WHOOOOOOOO now I can pretend I'm Saitou Hajime GATOTSUUUUUUU

The point is, after that moment, Dante and his sword were BEST FRIENDS, and tons of great stuff happened afterward, at least until the part with the grenade launcher and the lizard men.

That is why our first topic is How We Met.

Yeah, okay, the truth is, I don't remember how we met. I'm a terrible friend like that. I remember how I met only two of my friends, and they were ones I met in college. It must have been sometime in Kindergarten, because I don't have any BFF Memories from before then. I think the earliest thing I remember was playing on the carpeted floor of my classroom, playing with buttons. They were really shiny buttons that my teacher had brought in for her students to play with.

There were other toys, oh yes. But the buttons. They were so shiny. I had never seen such buttons, not ever in my life. And they were ALL TOGETHER in one container. I think there was a big green one, partially translucent, shining in the depths of that plastic cup like some shipwrecked jewel.

So we furtively slipped our favorite buttons away into our pockets without telling anyone. The teacher didn't see us, or at least if she did, she never called us on it, probably because it was vaguely pathetic to watch five-year-old girls convinced they were running an under-the-radar spare button thievery operation.

Well, okay, I say "we", but I only know for a fact that I was a dirty, dirty button thief. I can neither prove or disprove that my friend joined me, because I was too busy being subversive.

This moment was also important because it set the stage for the small-scale, covetous thievery of cheap, mass-manufactured Shiny Things from the public school system for years to come.