Filling in the Gaps

When Paula drove up in her little blue car with North Carolina plates, it was like, well, like twenty years hadn't passed. But I'm pretty sure that's how long it had been since we'd last seen each other. Maybe longer.

We carried our mugs of tea out to the lounge chairs and started...Talking. We didn't waste any time filling in the gaps. We covered a lot of territory for one afternoon; marriage, divorce, mothers, fathers, lovers, children, friends from college, work, love, loss.

We damn near choked on our tea remembering the American History class, Wisconsin Death Trip, where the entire class was stoned 99.9% of the semester. Okay, it was 100%. Our professor, Jerry, had the cowboy boots, the handle bar mustache, a vest with a pocket watch. He was the real McCoy. But that's a whole other chapter. The class couldn't have been called Wisconsin Death Trip, could it?

Anyway, I'm feeling a little tongue-tied right now, and a lot sentimental. There's something about having people in your life who knew you back then:

I'm the one with the long straight hair parted down the middle, often spotted skinny dipping in ponds, quarries, puddles. Paula's got the camera slung around her neck. Nobody had crow's feet.

But here's the thing: we've earned our crow's feet. And our stories too. I'm thinking old friends have a way of handing a piece of you, back to yourself.

That's priceless.