You've Got to Be Old to Have Friends Like These

For years now I've been having a monthly dinner with three of my high school girlfriends. Our schedules don't always coordinate and we sometimes have to skip a month--or two--if someone is out of town or if one of the kids (Mary's got two; Julie has one; Lisa and I have dogs...) is sick. But we've been going pretty strong as of late, and that's especially important to me as I get geographically farther from them.

We've all been friends since our freshman year of high school, and although it's hard to admit this (to myself, more than to anyone else), that means we've been friends for twenty-three years. Although Julie and Lisa have been friends for even longer:

See the two peanuts in the center, right below the only kid wearing a jacket? (why is that kid wearing a jacket?) That's Lisa (L) and Julie (R). Like, they couldn't be any cuter. Photo courtesy of Lisa Neenan (and probably her mom, too, so thanks, Mrs. C.)

Here they are currently, from our dinner last week:

They're still pretty damn cute, but have upgraded from t-ball to wine. Smart girls.

And here's me and Mary:

We'd have liked a nice picture of all four of us, but the guy at the table next to us had a few too many and this was the result:

blurrrrrrrrrrrrry

It's remarkable to me that we've been friends for this long, and that we found each other at all. We're so different, which is probably why we gravitate to each other. These girls are certainly some of the best things about my high school experience, and some of the best things about the past fifteen years. But after thinking about it, I've decided that our one true bond is our shared ability to make Mary snort with laughter by the end of dinner. That's a bond that doesn't back down in the face of different college, career, and neighborhood trajectories, and it certainly laughs in the face of marriage, pregnancy, and Crystal Lake. HA! it says.

All of this walking down memory lane started last month when we were having dinner--my last as a resident of Chicago. About 36 hours before the movers came, I left the house looking something like this...

...and met the girls down at the Handlebar in Wicker Park. We were lucky enough to be joined that night by our friend Megan, who lives with her husband and three gorgeous kids in Philadelphia. She was visiting family in town and made time for us, so with the added bonus of Megan, and with me fresh off of going through bits and bobs of nostalgia as I packed, the five of us had a hilarious and sentimental night.

Walk with us, won't you, down memory lane.

There's Lisa, curly haired and athletic:

Looking smashing

And Mary, not letting her braces dampen that smile:

Radiant on a dry summer lawn

And here's our flying friend Vermille, who also just had a little baby boy--Mary and I are two of the three girls tossing her up there and catching her. Mary and I went though four years of high school cheerleading together, which is a lot of sprained wrists and bruises, hairspray and spankies.

We are still very strong.

And I can't leave myself out of this circus of memories, so here's me at the eighth grade, on the cusp of running into my three favorite maniacs:

I wonder if I can still get my hair to do that...

When I lamented to the gang that I hadn't found any pictures of Julie as a teenager, Mary immediately came to the rescue:

A great snapshot, but we were a little disappointed not to have a picture of Julie with her troll doll collection. Yes, her troll doll collection.

And Megan gave me a pretty spectacular picture of herself for good measure:

Um, Megs. There's a bird on your shoulder.

We talked and laughed about the old times as we had a few of these,

We drank the bar out of Radlers. Literally.

and we all felt pretty damn young. Eventually we'll be at a table at one of the kids' wedding, still drinking too much beer; and we might each be decked out in some sort of pants-suit ensemble; and we'll very likely be dancing like crazy to the embarrassment of the young people there (and our husbands). But we won't care, because by that time we'll have been friends for fifty years. And we'll be legends.