I’m just waiting on a friend

On Wednesday evening, I had a very pleasant surprise. I was sitting here watching “American Idol” and facebooking (I’m a multi-tasker, y0!). For the first hour of the show, they were doing the music of Queen, with Brian May and Roger Taylor playing with the band...and yes, they are both still amazing musicians! I can’t say that the Idol contestants did very well with Queen music...Freddie’s are some big shoes to fill, and I just wasn’t all that impressed.

Anyway, I loved Queen when I was in high school, had all the albums and everything. A poster of Freddie Mercury. I was much older before I realized that Freddie wouldn’t have been into me! I enjoyed seeing Brian and Roger perform, if not much else, and these will always be great songs. I still love ‘em! As I was making comments about this on Facebook, I got a friend request from Nina. I recognized her name immediately, because she is the daughter of my best friend from high school, Margaret. Margaret and I have been friends on Facebook for a while, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time on there because she’s so busy. Gee, you’d think that getting her PhD in social work, teaching full time at a university, and being involved in her daughter’s activities would give her plenty of time for social networking. But noooo! Ha! 

Nina messages me and tells me that they were watching “American Idol,” and when they did Queen music, her Mom started talking about me and about how much I liked them years ago. Then Margaret got on there, said that she gets down our way fairly often now to check on her Mom, and before we knew it, we’d arranged for her and Nina to stop by this afternoon! I was just so excited and so happy. They left a little while ago, after about an hour and a half of visiting and talking.

I was thinking that it’s probably been at least 25 years since we last saw each other. I lived out of the area for a good 15 years after high school, and we all know how life gets in the way. But I’m telling you...we just started talking like it had been nothing more than a week since we’d last talked! Margaret looks fantastic, and Nina is just a doll and very sweet. (I hope we didn’t bore her too much with our gabbing! And yes, Nina is taller than me. Argh!) I had a pretty good idea that Margaret shared my liberal leanings, and sure enough, she noticed a card I have sitting here from the White House, and it’s pretty hard to miss the Obama stickers on the fridge! So we were off and running talking about politics, our families, and what we’ve both been up to over the years.

She is teaching now and has done work with the courts trying to get help for abused children and damaged adults. We are simpatico on that as well, and talked about changing the system, changing how the system deals with such things, giving people help instead of punishing them. Abused children eventually become abusive parents, and she said it’s a matter of trying to treat the damage to break the cycle. I recall Margaret and I being two of the more liberal kids in the class of ‘80 (maybe the only?), and nothing has changed! We also talked about whether or not we keep in touch with anyone else from high school...I said that I have a couple of friends from our class on Facebook, including Luana, but I systematically lost the others, either because they defriended me or because they never interacted with me and I cleaned house. And that despite being friends with several of them at the time, I never heard one word about our 30th reunion. She found that as amusing as I do. That’s me: Little Miss Dangerous!

We talked about a few things from the past, but only scratched the surface. One thing I remember from our English class...once a week, Mr. Flatt challenged the class to just WRITE. He would choose a topic, and we’d have maybe five minutes to just write like crazy. The goal wasn’t to make a cogent argument for anything--but to at least make decent sense--but to just let the thoughts flow. Whoever had the most words won for that week, but no one could win two weeks in a row. The first week, Margaret won. The second week, I won. The third week, Margaret won again. The fourth week, I won again. Then Mr. Flatt made the rule that no one could win more than twice. I’m laughing just thinking about that! We were both always good at English and with writing.

All this, and we never made it downstairs to the Retro Lounge! Next time...and we agreed that we look forward to a next time and will definitely make it happen.

After all these years, I can’t begin to tell you what a delight it was to see her again, and to meet her daughter. Almost three decades have passed, and it was like we picked up right where we left off, with the same attitudes and feelings about things, and in agreement about so much. I had a brief moment of nervousness today, wondering if we’d still get along, still like each other...but then I thought, “Hey. It’s Margaret. You were best friends for a reason.” And it was just an immediate hug and laughter and happiness to see each other again.

And to think that it was Queen that brought us together again! That makes it even better! I recall buying her the 45 of Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” way back when, so it’s only fitting that I post it now.