My
house phone rang the other night. Usually, it’s just sales calls or something like
that—have you gotten the call from Windows Help Desk, telling you that your
computer(!) has contacted them and there is an issue? Yeah, I get a lot of
those. I admit I’m not very nice when they call and my entreaties to not call
me anymore get me absolutely nowhere, but I digress.
My phone call the other night wasn’t one
of those. I was pleasantly surprised that an old friend I hadn’t talked to in a
long time called just to chat. She and I have that kind of relationship where
even if we don’t talk for a while, when we do, it’s just like we talked
yesterday. I’m sure you have friends like that, too.
She and I shared an apartment (actually two of
them) before each of us married so after we caught up (you know the drill…family,
work, health, etc), we launched into “Do you remember...” and we were off,
reliving the days our youth, admitting now (in hindsight and much, much older)
that some of the things we did were a little….crazy.
Oh, we weren’t bad. We were just young and naïve in
so many ways and we took chances that as older adults we never would. Case in
point: when we moved from one apartment to another, it was only two blocks away…so
we ended up carrying things up the street because they wouldn’t fit in my car.
Like what you might ask? Her hope chest, a kitchen table, my grandmother’s
rocking chair, and various other things. Yup, we toted that
stuff from one apartment to another. In the dark. In Patterson , NJ
We both remembered (how could we
forget?) how broke we were and how I had a little clicker to calculate how much
we spent when grocery shopping because we just didn’t have the money if we went
over budget. And it was a tight budget, but back in the late 70s, you could get
four boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for a buck! To this day, when I see
that familiar box, I think of her (and that little red clicker at the grocery).
We have a history, a shared experience that taught
us so much. We left the conversation with promises to call each other more
often, which I plan to keep because I think of her often and I can’t help being
so thankful that we’re still friends after all these years. I'm still smiling!
As
always, happy reading (and visiting with old friends),
Marie
Friends like that are priceless. What a sweet memory! Thanks for sharing this story with us...and giving me something fun to read as I procrastinate and avoid work. :)
ReplyDelete