Lynne

This picture of my friend, Lynne, and me was taken last summer when we traveled back to Michigan for our 45th high school reunion. (My Awesome Husband Greg took the picture, as you can see if you look carefully at the reflection in Lynne's sunglasses.) It was the first Lapeer High reunion that Lynne had attended, and the first time I had seen her in about forty years.

Lynne was one of my closest friends in high school, and in a lot of ways, my counterpart. Seeing her in the hotel the day before the reunion opened a floodgate of memories. All of the hours spent on the phone trying to figure out why boys--specific boys and boys in general--were not asking us out. The rainy Sunday afternoon we spent driving in and out of the gas station where a certain "person of interest" was working. (It's hard to imagine what he thought of those two girls who couldn't seem to decide if they needed gas or not.) And later, holding each others' hair back as we spewed forth the effects of an afternoon spent drinking Manhattans from iced tea glasses.

After several years of getting reacquainted on facebook, the adult Lynne felt as much a part of my soul as the teenaged Lynne had been. How wonderful it was, then, to hear her voice on the phone, sounding exactly as I remembered, and then to see her walking toward us down the hall as Greg and I went to meet her for drinks at the hotel bar. All of those sayings you hear about friends...no matter how long it's been...blah, blah, blah...time is not relevant? Well, they're true. We are both different now, of course. We've learned to handle our liquor, and know that it's safest to stick with beer and wine. We no longer need attention from boys to know that we are Truly Wonderful Women. But those shared memories of what made us friends in high school are part of what will keep us friends forever.

And, thanks to modern technology, although Lynne lives in Mississippi and I live in North Carolina, we get together a couple times a week to watch our favorite television shows--Dancing With The Stars, The Voice and Project Runway. I don't have a smart phone, but I have a Kindle Fire, and I know how to use it. Funny how often we are in complete in agreement on who should go home and who should move on to the next round. Life is good, and it just keeps on getting better.