she's baaaack

It was that easy breezy beautiful kind of summer. I was 18? Maybe 19. Summer break before Junior Year of college. It was the year I met her, working at the air force base together, my stint as a shredder. Take that literally. I spent half of my day in a room to small to be a room, more like a closet. AC blasting, surrounded by heaps and heaps (for you Egan) of to-be-shredded paper. The other half of the day I spent next to her, in a cube that wasn't really a cube, no divider at least, doing some kind of computer work that I didn't understand, but really actually, emailing each other. Even though we were at an arms length from each other we'd script out lengthy emails about our summer nights with friends, boy friend issues and mishaps, and about what we should order for lunch. A trip to the Dunkin Donuts on base was our daily ritual. Sitting in her old school Buick, we'd make our way to just streets away to fill ourselves up on iced coffees. This was before the Simon and Garfunkel and Oasis renditions. Before we were legally old enough to buy our own booze. It was a time of curfews or rather breaking them, and dating a guy who was older than me that my father thought was too old. I loved life that summer. Work was easy and we were out by 3:30pm. It was when nights were thought to be cool when they were spent in Target's stationary or movie department. We'd go to the mall after, and frequently hit Sully's Ice cream for a frappe on our way home. It was that type of summer that you don't want to end, not that you ever want summers to really end. Going back to school, as exciting as it was to be the year of turning 21, and back to roommates and parties and a free gym, was sad in a way, in a new way. It was the summer I met one of my very best friends. The type you know right then and there will be one of those lifelong friends. Distance like West Virginia to Mass didn't matter then as much as France to Boston-ish hasn't mattered now. You vow to keep in touch with these type of friends because they have worked their way into your heart and you can't possibly imagine losing that link. So you email and call and you do what you gotta do to make it work. The friendship, it works because it's become so much a part of you that without it you'd be missing a piece of yourself that has grown to love this person. So you babysit her fish for nine months. They start out as 35 and she comes home to 5, but that's okay because you tried she says. And at 4:37pm on a Thursday that isn't going so hot, you receive a phone call from her and she's in the same! time! zone! She's home. And just like around this time in 2001, again you've got that feeling that this will be a good summer.