Betty Ann

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

2nd grade-1968

Betty Ann was a wonderful girl. She was my friend. My best friend. My first real friend. We were together everyday. We were in the same class in first grade and in second grade. We ate lunch together and played together at recess everyday. Our favorite games were Miss Mary Mack, string games like Jacobs' ladder and Red Rover. We also loved to jump rope. We passed notes and whispered in class and dared anyone to try to come between us.

Betty Ann lived about one block away from the school so she walked to and fro everyday. I lived about 20 minutes away. Although we never really visited at each other's homes, we had a bond at school that could never be broken. I loved her like a sister.

One Monday I went to school and she was not there. I thought she was out sick that day. I did not think anything of it. The next day she was out as well. I asked my teacher where she was and how sick was she. My mother was a teacher at the school on the same grade level as I was. My teacher said that she would go get my mother. My mother took me out of the class and told me that Betty Ann would not be coming back to school because she had been hit by a car. I asked if she were in the hospital. My mother said no. She was not. She had been run over by a car and she had died over the weekend. Betty Ann had been struck down right in front of her home.

I was upset that my mother did not tell me right away but I guess she was trying to spare me. I really was not understanding it all. I would never see her again. I became very upset and cried for a very long time. I cried for Betty Ann and I cried for me. I cried for the hole I felt I my heart. That hole has never left me. I still feel it, even today.

For my mother and I to get home each day we had to drive right past Betty Ann's house. It was on the right as we went to school and on the left as we went home. I got very upset each and everytime we had to pass her house. I wanted to go to her house and wanted to go to her funeral. My mother would not let me go. She said I was too upset and distraught already.

God, I miss her. She was truly a nice girl. Finally, it got a little easier to drive past her house as it neared the end of my 2nd grade in school. I still thought of her everyday and what a loss it was for her to be gone. I ended up changing schools for the 3rd grade so I did not have that drive past her house anymore. Now when I think of Betty Ann, I can see the two of us in my mind's eye outside in the school yard facing each other playing and saying Miss Mary Mack.