Turning points in different peoples’ lives can be simple and not affect the person very much at all, or it can totally change the way they look at life. The turning point in my life happened to be somewhere between these two examples. When I was 5 years old, I moved. For many people, moving can cause many problems and can be very upsetting because they have to leave friends and families behind. For me, it wasn’t very exciting. We were moving right down the street to another neighborhood and we went from living in the front of a neighborhood to the back. I think that I was mainly excited about getting a bigger room. Little did I know; the simple move down the street made a huge impact on my life. Being as young that I was, I don’t really remember the moving part very much, but I can still remember the days that I met my best friends.

I had lived in the same house for my entire life which was, at that time, a total of five years. I lived with my brother, mom, and dad, and I still do. The only part of moving that I really remember is that my mom told my brother that this time, he could have the room in the front of the house and I would get the room in the back. This turned out to be good thing for me because my room in our new house was bigger anyway. You would have thought I would have been torn because I was leaving my old friends but, seeing that I was only five; I didn’t really have very many close friends. Kindergarten at my new school went by and I met new friends and had an awesome time.
But the real adventure began on the first day of first grade. It was a sunny morning; the smell of freshly cut grass and new school supplies was in the air. My hair felt light and fluffy because of the hair cut I had the day before. It was a new school year and the eagerness of a child on the first day of school woke me up and filled my mind that summer morning. My mom was walking me down to the bus stop; as a good parent should. At the bus stop, there was another girl standing there.
She was tall for her age and I noticed something about her and her mom, she didn’t look like her mom very much at all. (I later learned that she was adopted like I was which added to our friendship).We talked and our moms talked which was mostly just saying “Hi,” and “My name is Anastasia, what’s yours?”, and we sat together on the bus when it picked us up. We soon discovered that we were in the same class and became really good friends and we started to hang out with each other a lot, especially because we lived right down the street from each other. We have had the same relationship for eight years. Now, I have two best friends that I met over a period of two years. First grade went by and my new friend and I became best friends and were spending all the time that we could together, alone. That is, until second grade.
The first day of school was as normal as usual; our parents walked us down to the bus; as good parents should. It was a nice morning, it wasn’t hot but it was comfortably cool. Birds were singing in the trees and there was a crisp late-summer smell in the air. We talked and our parents talked and we sat on the bus as usual. On the bus ride home, was when my life was changed forever. When we got on the bus to go home, there was another girl on the bus with my best friend. She was smaller than, but not as small as me, she was paler with blonde hair and brown eyes, and she was sharing a seat with my best friend. My best friend introduced her to me and being the shy girl I was, I said hi. We talked on the bus and discovered that we all lived in the same neighborhood, all within walking distance from one another.

And that was when I knew we would be friends. It was mostly because our parents wouldn’t mind walking us to each other’s houses so we could hang out a lot. At the time, I didn’t know that the girl sitting with my best friend would become my other best friend and still would be; seven years later. My best friends and I spent every minute of free time that we had together playing together and when we grew up, we “hung out” with each other. Believe me when I say that we watched each other grow up. Eight years can really change a person and we are still changing even now.

Moving when I was five didn’t really affect me then, but now I can truly appreciate it for what it really was, an opportunity to have a different life. My life wasn’t bad or anything, it just gave me a chance to do something else with my life. As I was thinking about this, I realized that if I hadn’t have moved, I would have gone to another elementary school and therefore, would not have met my best friends. This event seems so small, but to a lot of people, moving is a big event. Now I realize that moving made a really big impact in my life. If I would have stayed in my old neighborhood, I would have gone to a different elementary school, but the same middle school. If I had just met them in the same middle school, we would most likely not be as good of friends as we are now. It’s pretty much a proven fact that friends from elementary school and younger will be better friends than people who just met in middle school because they have been around each other longer and know each other better. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t have met them, but I can’t even picture my life without them.
Although the past eight years have been a mix of good and bad times, as all relationships go through tough times when we had arguments and fights and things of that nature, like most relationships go through at some time or another, but I would never want to take those years back. They’ve taught me so much about what a true friend is. We may grow apart after long periods of time like summer breaks when we don’t see each other as often, but we always pick up in the fall, right where we left off like summer never happened. I’ve learned so much about how relationships should work and how you should treat friends. We’ve recently been growing apart because we don’t see each other as much because we are in different classes and don’t have as much free time but I do think that it would be interesting to see what my life would’ve been without them. Would I have done other sports, been interested in other books, or different types of movies? Would I like different food? Would I know what I know now about how friendships should work? The possibilities could be endless! They’ve impacted me in such a way that I would never want to go back. My life has been forever changed by the friends I chose eight long years ago.