BFF

My best friend just gave me a call. She lives in Ohio and is a wonderful mixture of dizzy and delightful.

Sound like anyone you know??

We became friends the first year she taught and shared a room with me in St. Clair Shores, MI. I was pregnant with my first daughter, Amy, then and was always starving. We had the same planning period and I, too often, lured her away from grading papers and lesson planning to come out on School Newspaper Business (I was the sponsor!)which always segued into lunch at McDonald's.

I love when people are easily corrupted.

What I discovered over time is that I am not the ONLY person in the world who walks into walls, trips over dust, and laughs away mistakes.

Terry is the perfect person to be my friend.

We've weathered the births of five children (three,mine, and two, hers,), her divorce, the moves to Ohio for her and then Florida for me, Tom's death and a myriad other highs and lows along the way to here-and-now.

She was my choice for Tom's New Wife when I croaked but, cruelly, life took another path for us on that one.

They would have made a good couple!

I know she's easy to live with because she and I have done a good deal of tripping together over the years. She's actually better company on a vacation than Tom was because she likes to shop, is happy seeing new places and doing things never done before, and - like me - never gets pissy when lost. She knows, as I do too, that people are always 'out there' just waiting for the chance to help a couple of ditzy girls find their way back to the beaten path!!

Tom always took having to ask directions VERY personally!!?

Terry's and my biggest challenge in travelling together was and still is WARDROBE. It's a running joke that, when we each emerge from our sleeping quarters and meet up for the day's activities, we are in the same basic outfit or colors or even shoes. It's ridiculous!! More than several times we have arrived at the breakfast spot, taken one look at each other only to have one of us turn on her heel to go back from whence she came and change.

It's particularly odd that this still happens because we shop separately in two different states in two different climate regions and we are not even close to the same size!?

It's pure and simple evidence of our connection.

She's the one who introduced me to Sarasota in the first place; that has to have been thirty years ago. That was, if I remember correctly, the year her 4-year old son, Bobby, kept putting on his sister's clothes and trying to get out the door with us while wearing them!?

Not that there's anything wrong with that??? lol

That was just a phase but it sure made for some big laughs after the children were safely tucked in bed at night!

Laughing together is what we do best. We laugh at ourselves, at each other, at life's vagaries.

And laughter is the best medicine.