TheBanyanTree: Rosie

[Gloria]

I started to write "I met an old friend today" and thought, how does it come
to be that friends we've had for a very long time are thought of as "old"
friends.  Is it because we're older, so "old" fits, or is it for some other
reason?

Rosie and I met about 30 years ago at our workplace.  She had moved to Flint
to escape the small town life of northern Michigan.  I couldn't believe
she'd do such a thing, as I was plotting and planning an escape from the
city life.  I remember us being pretty good friends, but don't remember a
whole lot about why I remember that.  We didn't work together very long and
she, the married one of us two, soon took a year off to mother her baby.
When she finally came back, she was assigned to a different department.  I'd
completely forgotten about that until today when she reminisced about days
of long ago.

Rosie moved to SC about 25 or so years ago, and I moved to northern Michigan
a short time later. Oddly, a chain of events led to my living in the town
she escaped from all those years ago.  Small world, isn't it?

Rosie is attending a Class Reunion and brought her daughter & her family
along to show them the old haunts.  We both decided we haven't changed after
all these years, but everyone else surely has.  :-)  It amazes me how
memories differ.  She stated she doesn't drink anymore... "can you believe
that?"  Sure, I said, I can't remember whether you ever did.  What?  Don't
you remember paydays and everyone going across the street to the bar?  Oh
yeah... were you part of that group?  Man, my memory sucks sometimes.  What
I remember about that bar is learning that I should never go beer drinking
with my brother.  Trying to keep up tended to put me in a fuzzy state pretty
quickly.  I thought my brother was old then.  He was 33 when I turned 21.

We both remembered our Power Puff Mechanics class.  We thought we needed to
know how to do tune-ups, change a flat tire, do oil changes.  We were trying
to protect ourselves from getting ripped off at the service station.  We'd
watch them do the work, just to be sure we were getting what we asked for.
Besides that, it gave us the opportunity to shoot the breeze with the
mechanics.

What a wonderful afternoon it is when one can hug an old friend and
reminisce about days gone by.  You know what never ceases to amaze me? How
people can be friends when they're young and then meet up many, many years
later and immediately hug, relax, and discover that our interests, likes and
dislikes, are a lot alike even now.  I find it odd that it amazes me.
Afterall, I really haven't changed that much, why would they?

Dreamer...always dreamin' of a kinder, gentler world for ALL