Friends of 40+ years

One of four people in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closest friends; if they seem ok, then you're the one. - Ann Landers

For four days last week myself and three of my closest friends were together to celebrate our 35th year of being out of high school.

We questioned whether that number was really real; when we are together we feel as though we are 17 again - but with much more wisdom than we had at that age. And as far as our looking like the 53 year olds we remember as 17 year olds, we look nothing like them. No double knit, elastic waisted pants and polyester tops or gray hair for us. We told each other many times over that we look darn good. (And we do!)

This friendship we share is special. It has been many years since we have shared this amount of time together - there were many slumber parties through the school years - and we picked up right where we left off. There was not a quiet, uncomfortable moment between us. That is a wonderful friendship indeed.

Three of us began school together when we were 6 years old; the third joined our class in seventh grade. Adding those year on to the 35 calculates friendships that are over 40 years old. How awesome is that!

I wonder about how these three became three of my best friends.

Jody, who once in elementary, gave me one of her school pictures then a few days later said she wanted it back to give to someone else. It was only a few years later we were very best friends. Where "Jod" was, "Lor" was.

Pat nearly killed me when I was a passenger in the driver's ed car she was driving. Had our instructor not used his brake, we would have been in the ditch.

And Sue nearly killed me with embarrassment a time or two when the notes we wrote and passed from row to row and from person to person to reach each other in class, filled with words about the "loves of our lives", were intervened by the teacher who inturn read them to the entire class. These were all incidents that cemented our friendships.

We ventured to Lanesboro, Minn. to Amish country. We visited Amish homes, purchased Amish handcrafted pieces and were intrigued by their culture. We missed out on many of the other opportunities the area presented us but we shopped until we dropped and laughed until we cried. (I cautioned a couple of them to stop before they peed.)

We talked of our other 20 classmates and were sad to hear of the recent death of one them and for a few seconds I felt guilty that we did not invite others to our get together but then remembered we had tried several times in the past to include them without avail so got over the thought quickly and enjoyed the friendship the four of us shared.

We talked of the past and the people that helped form our lives and the wonderful small-town surroundings in which we were fortunate to grow up in, we talked of the present which includes grown kids and grandchildren for two of them and we talked of the future and where we would gather next year.

I came across the quote by Ann Landers on a wall hanging on our adventure and we questioned several times who that one unstable member of our foursome was and we could not agree on who it was. And so we quit, deciding we must be all ok and perhaps maybe Ann had the numbers wrong. It must be one in five.