It’s like grade school. How many times did I stand in a group of kids on the playground waiting as a class mate selected by the teacher chose members for her side in Dodge Ball or Red Rover? “Choose me, choose me,” I pleaded silently as the anointed student placed her finger on her cheek and looked from side to side before she made each selection. “I choose… ”she said, as my heart did a flip-flop. That’s all Brett wanted — to be the one chosen by his mates. And coach Brad Childress, who some say doesn’t use the brain God gave him, made a smart play when he dispatched members of the squad, the three players closet to Favre, to Hattiesburg to bring back the quarterback. And just like any grade-schooler knows, when your friends say, “We need you, Buddy, and we like playing with you,” a kid will do whatever they ask because it feels so good to be needed and liked. It won’t cure a case of life-long insecurity but it helps ease the symptoms.

Just ask Sally Field. I’m old enough to remember the actresses’ Academy Award acceptance speech for her performance in Places in the Heart, her second Oscar for best actress. The former Gidget and Flying Nun looked out to the audience of her peers and gushed, “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!” Brett Favre should take a page from Field’s play book. He should use those same words when he gets to the Dome for the first game of his second season because fans and players agree: He hasn’t had an orthodox career and right now, his former arch enemies like him. They really like him.

By the time I had a career, I’d had enough of looking like everyone else and unlike my friends who became stewardesses and nurses, never took a job that required a color-coded uniform. But when I retired from the car business, I took a page from the stay-at-home book of a woman who had lived across the street in the 1990s. While I had been deciding which power suit to wear to the office every morning, she, a homemaker with three young children, didn’t vary her wardrobe. In the summer, it was tan shorts, tennis shoes, and a white tee shirt. I didn’t understand it until I began working at home. Coming up with a subject for my column every week or deciding how to dress a character in a short story, taxes my mind enough. The last thing I want to do is make wardrobe choices every day. So, I bought some white tee shirts, a few sweaters from Target, and those drawstring pants the kids wear to school; all in light colors that can be plunked into the washing machine in one load.

So please don’t think I’m saying all uniforms are bad. I like my new every-day duds. And as a kid, I was proud to wear my Brownie Scout uniform every week. The best part of that light brown shirtwaist-type dress and beanie was wearing it to school on the days of our meetings instead of that jumper. The same was true of the white blouse, green skirt, beret, and sash of badges that made up my Girl Scout uniform. I wish I could say the same about the one-piece red rompers the nuns made us wear for high school gym class. Ugly as they were, though, they weren’t the worst part of phy ed. You know what I’m talking about: undressing in front of classmates in the not-so-private locker room was the worst. But that will have to be the subject of another column.

Those jeans looked so good on my sister that the next day I asked her what kind they were. She gave me the brand and style number and said. “They’re a bit spendy but worth it.” She’d had them for years. I said my thanks and made a comment that if they made my back end look as good as hers, the price would be right. When I called the store, the salesperson suggested getting two sizes to make sure one fit and when I told her the name of two other brands my sister told me fit well, she added two pairs of one and one of the other which she said run true to size. My husband had planned to go to the mall the next day; I asked if he would pick up the jeans so I could try them on at home. “The salesperson has the bag ready so use the credit card so it’s easy to return the ones that don’t fit,” I told him. A couple of hours later, he walked into the den, set down the bag, and in a low but urgent voice said, “I’ve got to check the door to make sure I locked it. I think I’m being followed.” “What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I requested an armed guard to escort me to my car,” my husband went on, “but they didn’t have one.” He urged me to try on the jeans as fast as I could so he could get back with the returns before the store closed. Again, I asked what he was talking about. “There’s over 900 dollars worth of jeans in this bag,” he said. I reacted with a swear word. “Why would you spend 900 dollars on blue jeans?” I asked. He said that was the question he wanted to ask me.

For the record, even if they lasted long enough that I could be buried in them and even if they had made my fanny look good, there is no way I would spend that kind of money on a pair of jeans. When I said that to my husband, he let out a sigh of relief. Later, he tried to console me by saying it wasn’t just about the price of the pants. He said we should consider the extra expense of hiring a body guard — the one who would protect my two hundred dollar asset.

Fifteen years later, as I waited my turn at the post office in the small New Jersey town where my husband and I had moved, I found out. When the woman at the front of the line finished her transaction, I was surprised to see a familiar, but older, face; Gretchen’s sister had moved to New Jersey, also. We exclaimed over the fact that we ended up on the same street. “Small world,” we agreed. She filled me in on my girlhood friend: college out East was followed by marriage and children. But that was nearly 40 years ago and every once in awhile, I still wonder what happened to my sidekick.

Answering the questions for the family newsletter brought new queries to mind: Does Gretchen ever think about the day we had to sit under our kindergarten teacher’s desk as punishment because on the way to school we’d entertained fellow bus riders with howling sounds like the ones Gretchen’s dog, Herman, made? Does she remember her Dachshund sitting on a stool between us at the corner drug store as he shared Gretchen’s ice cream? Or that he snuck into the fenced area my dad had made for my Easter ducklings and made us all cry? On Halloween, did she tell her children about the ghoulish site we created for the neighborhood kids in the crawl space under her family’s house? About the peeled grapes for eyeballs and left-over spaghetti we used for brains.

Those were the days when, after school and during the summer, kids could roam freely through their neighborhood and all their parents cared about was that they were in the home for dinner. Gretchen and I took our time walking the half-mile to ballet class every week. If the spirit moved us, we got up early on Saturday mornings and walked to church for Mass, stopping at the bakery on the way back. I wonder if my grade school friend has forgotten those soft, sticky, sugar-raised donuts and her freckle-faced friend. The one she vowed to be friends with forever and then, sealed the pact with blood. Maybe she has but I never will.