Maid of Honor

I had dinner with my girlfriends the other night.  And, as usual, we started reminiscing. We’ve been friends for 30+ years, and we’ve shared a lot of stuff.  We talked about everything under the sun and eventually the subject turned to our weddings.     

Shay married first among us.  By the time I got married, she was pregnant with her first child.  We all remembered that.  Pat even remembered that Shay had a striped maternity dress on at the wedding.  Now… I know this to be true because I found a picture several months ago, and so it was fresh on my mind.  How Pat remembers it is a mystery.  It was 26 years ago.   None of us can even remember what we ate for breakfast.

What does it say about our friendship, though,  when my friend remembers the  outfit  that one friend wears 26 years ago, but completely forgets that she was the Maid of Honor at the same wedding?  Hmmm… she had no recollection whatsoever that she was my Maid of Honor.  REALLY? 

‘Here’re pictures of you as my Maid of Honor’… ‘What?  I was really the Maid of Honor? ‘Yes… here you are witnessing the marriage certificate with the Best Man.’   ‘Seriously, I was the Maid of Honor?’   ‘Yes… and yet you do not remember at all?’   ‘Well, I remember the wedding, but I thought the pregnant girl was your Maid of Honor, and I remember that Shay had on a striped dress.’     WOW! 

 Words cannot begin to even describe the level of laughter coming from Shay.    My devious mind was going other places though.  Since we can’t remember things that really happened, it might be possible for me to make her remember things that never happened.    Hmmm…Like the time she laughed so hard at me that she peed her pants in a dance club and I got mad because we had to leave… But wait, that really did happen!   Or the time we dressed up in Sauna suits to go dancing so that we could lose weight, and we had water coming out our shoes from the sweat.  Wait… that happened too…     The problem is, the stuff that really happened to us in the past is far more fun than anything we can think up now.   And… after all these years, we can still make her pee her pants.     Oh Yeah!

Good friends are a priceless item.  Do everything you can to stay in touch.  They will keep you strong when you feel weak, and they will make you laugh when you feel like crying.   They will love you for all the goodness that you don’t even know you have.  And they will love you for all the faults that they have seen as well.   And… you can go years without seeing them, and just pick back up where you left off.   That’s the best thing about girlfriends.   

 But as for the three of us… Lord help us all when we go to the nursing home!  Or perhaps I should say… Lord help everyone at the Nursing home when we finally get there!   We will remember how to lace our roller skates, and we will remember our friendship, and we might even recollect that we were at each other’s weddings.  But we won’t remember how to follow any rules.    We’ll still be making them up as we go along…