Old Friends, Like Bookends

In the meantime, I spend some well deserved and much enjoyed time with old friends.

On a Friday night when I do not have my kids and Craig and I are not going to be able to connect, I text my old friend Toni.  She and I live a mere few blocks from each other and I bump into her husband more than I bump into her. Most famously, I ran into her husband the night before Christmas Eve one year while I was dating J. - at the grocery store, as he did the self check out.  I came up behind him and said, "Did you forget your Christmas goose?" and promptly goosed him, making him jump out of his skin.  We had had quite a laugh. J. - not so much. When I told him the story, with tears of laughter streaming down my face (you have to admit it was pretty darn clever) he'd thought it was the most horrifically inappropriate thing I could have done. It mocked him. It led Toni's husband on. Toni's husband Del would surely think I was a dirty slut.

WTF?  Hil was with me. It was hilarious. I'd met Del the week after Toni had. We'd been friends for years. Our children were in school together.  And it's not like I flashed him my boobs. A goose is so benign.

Anyway, back to Toni.  We hadn't been out for drinks in ages. I think the last time I was on a bar stool next to her was when I'd broken up with J. and was confiding to her that I was sure he'd be dead within a year. Perhaps that was a little bit of an exaggeration, it had taken almost two, but he'd texted me that night that he was hospitalized with a very grave prognosis. Of course he had. He'd have done anything to get my attention and my sympathy.  As if that is how you want to feel about your partner. Yeah - that'll woo me back.  Toni had taken my phone and threatened to text him something that would send him into irregular heart rhythms just to get him off my phone.

But since then we'd always missed each other. She's headed out to the pub with Del on a night when I have my kids. I invite her out for a beer and she's at the beach.  I go to the early Middle School concert, and she's gotten tickets for the late one.

So on my way to my car, I text her. "Up for a beer at the pub?"

And she replies right away that she's on her way to another place with Del. Further away, but a good place to hang. Loads of men with money for sure if I need to keep my options open.

"You are welcome to join us!!!!"

I consider my options. Surely at The Pub I'd find friends. But I may sit there uncomfortably long looking like an aging loser barfly for a bit and I'd probably lose my tolerance for that and leave before anyone remotely interesting or familiar came in.

I decide at the crossroads on the way home what I'll do. I am reasonably dressed and groomed. I need to run a comb through my hair and add a fresh swipe of lipstick. And some gum. But I am game. I'll join Toni and Del. Let the games begin. There is nothing like stepping out with a friend with whom you regularly stepped out during your Roaring Twenties.

Bring on the Tylenol.