Cohorts, Colleagues, and Champions

I think I’m sick of politics for the moment. It’s been a high bullshit week and I’ve about had it with the pundits and the critics and the talking heads. I am bored with the spin and even boreder with manipulative cockabarley that seem to populate the airwaves. I need a break. I need to think about something else for a few minutes.

In a stroke of unbelievable luck right outside the Cub where I’d gone to get some bananas and milk, I saw a most familiar face, one I’d not seen in the flesh for, oh, I don’t know, maybe 20 years or so. We live less than three miles apart (2.9 if you go via Delaware instead of Dodd) but time and kids and lives seems to have made crossing Hwy 110 a veritable chasm...not that we hadn’t talked about meeting for coffee. That said, Facebook is a  wonderful thing and we have managed to stay in touch and up to date. So when I saw Lisa standing outside the Cub, I couldn’t believe my eyes!

“Lisa!?!?!?!!!” I cried.

“Good Lord!” came the response. There were hugs of disbelief. I actually met her husband who seemed genuinely pleased to finally meet the WP.

Lisa and I have a long history, dating all the way back to 1978 when I worked at Finn’s Cameras and she worked for our ad agency. When I went to run Centre Stage, I hired her to do our group sales and marketing. Steve and I danced at her original wedding, we four went to see Judy Tenuta in a tiny, smoky comedy club...a life altering event..., we had our boys around the same time...and like Steve and Lisa and her brother Randy, they all went to Henry Sibley High School....but somehow we never managed to have that long promised cup of coffee.

Birthday twins, we started 
in kindergarten

My playpen
pals

Friendships are funny things. Some of them last a lifetime even when the miles are as multitudinous as the hours apart; others are so close that they implode and dissipate into the ether. Often we don’t recognize the ones who are the truest of friends until a disaster crashes down upon everyone’s heads. And there are friends who are out there orbiting, perigee to apogee to perigee again. These are often the ones who know you best of all, the ones with whom you share the dance as much as the space between encounters knowing that the strings between you are forever.

In the course of 61 years, there have been good friends, friends who turned out not to be so good. There have been only two friendships I came to regret; those lessons are indelibly burned into me. In both cases I trusted where I should not have trusted and, as Steve would tell you, I got my head squashed in a duck press. I was young; I’m a little more discerning now...but not much. Still, I never cease to marvel at how, with the touch of a dial, years melt away, jokes are still funny, and futures are still entwined.

So instead of writing a scathingly brilliant blog entry about the ongoing stupidity of American politics, I am taking a moment to appreciate how I got here from there. My life hasn’t turned out the way I planned, but who’s life ever does? Instead, I’d rather celebrate the twists and turns of fate. I want to laugh about the seriously strange things I’ve done with my cohorts in crime, colleagues in chaos, and champions of change.

Still hangin' out.

Meanwhile, Andy and I are meeting Lisa and Frank for dinner on Wednesday night. Instead of coffee, we’ll have sake and I am perfectly fine with the change.

Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

No one's life turns out as one planned  but it's okay.

If you're still breathing, it's  win.