{"id":880,"date":"2006-02-23T06:32:55","date_gmt":"2006-02-23T11:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/?p=880"},"modified":"2006-02-23T16:04:20","modified_gmt":"2006-02-23T21:04:20","slug":"the-pf-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/2006\/02\/23\/the-pf-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"The PF Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nurse_patti.jpg\"<\/a>
\n(click)<\/p>\n

In a recent comment, Diane noted that Halo was the last friend Patti made. That, and the Olympics, got me thinking about the first friend Patti made. <\/p>\n

His name was Billy Conway. He and Patti were best friends from age three until fourth or fifth grade, when it became uncool to have a best friend of the opposite sex \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about the same time Patti began to prefer horses to humans.<\/p>\n

Like Patti, Billy was a cute, bright, full-of-energy, youngest child. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A bit spoiled, those two,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d some said. And were they a pair to deal with! There were always plans to hatch, places to go, things to explore, trouble to get into, scams to perpetrate. <\/p>\n

One summer \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the one between kindergarten and first grade, if memory serves \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they saw an ad on TV for PF-Flyer sneakers. Said ad suggested that PFs made you faster than any other sneaker in the world. They looked at their own feet. One wore PFs; the other Keds. A contest was born.<\/p>\n

They picked out the best stretch of Scott Drive. They marked the course with chalk. They sold tickets to everyone in the neighborhood. They enlisted their fathers to be the judges, one on either side of the finish line. Billy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s older brother Robert shot a cap pistol to start the race. <\/p>\n

While it was close, Keds won. Once across the line, Patti took off her PFs, left them in the street, and marched over to her father, hands on hips. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll need Keds,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she announced and strutted home in her stocking feet.<\/p>\n

She got Keds. And she and Billy moved on to their next adventure. But everyone remembered the PF Challenge, and no kid in the neighborhood would wear anything but Keds for as long as the memory lasted. Some may be wearing them still!<\/p>\n

FierceBaby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(click) In a recent comment, Diane noted that Halo was the last friend Patti made. That, and the Olympics, got me thinking about the first friend Patti made. His name was Billy Conway. He and Patti were best friends from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiercebaby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainecourse.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}