Loyalty

Somebody asked me how I define loyalty recently.

When I was eight years old, I had the most wonderful best friend.  We bonded over project potential, a program for 'gifted kids' - it was my job to show her how to get to the room when she was a new student, so I suggested we eat lunch together.  

Well one lunch stretched into a whole year and a lifetime of friendship.  Each day the whole class was seated at a long table, the table was labeled with a paper cone that bore our teacher's name.   One spring day, I remember it was spring and not too hot to play outside yet.  We all looked to getting the four-square court first.

  Another girl was teasing my friend, offending her in my third-grader sensibility.  So I did what any good third grade best friend would do.  I took that paper cone a stuck it in the offender's food.  Stuck it ReaL gooood!  Let me back-track by sharing that I was quite the goody-goody, talkative but mostly liked by my teachers and rarely, if ever, in trouble.  Well that all came to a screeching halt!  Oooh, they don't like it when you make a mess in the cafeteria!  No matter whose honor you are defending.  I spent the rest of the lunch hour facing the wall all.by.myself. a difficult task for a social creature such as myself.

Ahh, to recognize loyalty in the face of diversity, or at least in the face of the gray-haired lunch monitor.  I am her loyal friend and she is mine. I'd step in front of a train for her, heck I'll take it one step further--I'd give her a kidney.
I guess I define loyalty by being willing to get messy, to go through the thick of it all with someone.  Messy makes it worthwhile.  Messy makes it fun. Messy makes me, ME!
 Who are you loyal to? What have you and your best friend bonded over?