Nothing like old old friends

Today is my friend Jackie’s birthday. We have known each other since college. We have had many MANY adventures together. We’re getting together for lunch today, with Brooke – another old friend from college. I wrote of her here. We have planned this lunch for a month and a half. It’s been rescheduled multiple times. They both came to my reading back in October, which was awesome, but we haven’t all been in the same place at the same time since.

Two photos below the jump. One is rather famous in my group of friends.

Here is one of the strangest photos ever taken in the history of the medium. Me, Mitchell, Jackie, and Bill and Lee – somehow we crashed a big formal party of a Christian youth group that was happening at the Marriott in Providence. We had ZERO business being there. We all got dressed up. We danced on a crazy dance floor surrounded by gyrating Christians. We messed with people’s minds. Everyone asked, “So who do you know?” We would make shit up. We were not supposed to be there.

Guys. Go home. You weren’t invited.

And here is a potluck supper we had at the theatre department. I was a freshman. Jackie was a sophomore and I believe Brooke was, too – or maybe a junior. I was on the road to being friends with Brooke, although Rimers (a couple of months in the future) hadn’t happened yet. But Jackie I didn’t know at all. We had been in the Christmas show together, but we literally never spoke to one another. Not that hard to do, since it was a cast of thousands, with live animals and children on stage, and every scene a crowd scene. I am in the green sweater over to the left. Brooke is standing, over to the right, returning from the buffet table. And Jackie sits sort of behind me. She remembers that day. She didn’t really know anyone, and felt really left out, and ended up sitting with someone who was perfectly nice, but not at all who she wanted to be sitting with. She wanted to be sitting with US. It’s a tragic photo, in a way. Jackie and I re-enacted it many years later, with Jackie staring longingly at my table, like, “Can I sit with you guys? I’m cool too!!” Every time I look at this photo, I want to tell my younger self to turn around and talk to the blonde girl sitting RIGHT BEHIND YOU. I want to shout, “She is going to be a REALLY IMPORTANT FRIEND, Sheila – so why don’t you start now?? You won’t regret it!”

By the next year, there would be no way on earth that Jackie and I would NOT be sitting together. Miracles do happen and people DO find each other!