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Things I have learned:
1.Best friends should never, ever, ever go three and a half years without seeing each other.
2. When said best friend shows up at your house unexpectedly, make sure you find a chaperone before opening the wine.
3. Don’t expect your husband to keep a sensible head and tell you when you’ve had enough and should go to bed.
A little background: I met Dale when he was six. I was an older woman of about seven and a half, working hard at my then profession of Kindergarten Teacher’s helper. Dale and I were friendly all through school and got much closer in high school, although after I graduated we sort of lost touch.
One night a couple of years later, I was down at the local pub when I heard someone yell my name. Of course it was Dale. We picked up right where we left off and have been the best of friends ever since. He is Godfather to my daughter, “Uncle Dale” to both my children and absolutely the brother of my heart.
I moved from NY to FL in September of 1998. Last November Dale moved out of New York City for the rural quiet of Rapid City, South Dakota. After September 11th, he needed a break from the sadness of Downtown Manhattan. As it turns out the job in Rapid City was not at all what it was supposed to be and in the end the company pretty much shut down after the death of one of the partners.
So there was Dale in the middle of nowhere, with no job, in a place he wasn’t very fond of. In need of a roommate, after buying a home, his brother asked Dale to consider moving to Miami. After a whole 12 seconds of deliberation, Dale decided to take a chance. He loves Miami and has really talked about living there for the better part of the last decade.
Why didn’t he move there in the first place, Christine?
I don’t know, Dale just takes the long way around everything, seriously.
As he was leaving South Dakota with the moving truck, we went over his mapped route and it didn’t look like he was coming anywhere near Ocala. “Call me when you get to Miami and if it turns out you’re going to stop for the night anywhere in Central Florida, call me and stay here”, I offered as he was leaving, although I didn’t expect that I would see him. Last night at 5 pm, my phone rang. A voice said,
“Get some beer and meet me in Burger King parking lot” (as kids, BK parking lot was the place to be on a Saturday night; another lesson- being a teenager with no place to go is a universal theme).
“Dale! Where are you?”
“I told you, Burger King parking lot, get some beer.”
“Burger King, where?”
“On 27.”
(note: 27 is 15 minutes from my house)
*high pitched screaming*
I piled the kids in the car and raced to 27 where Dale and I proceeded to jump up and down and hug and scream and cry, after which he followed me back to my house for a sleepover! We got the kids fed and bathed and homework done and put them to bed. Once they were settled in we opened the wine. After a couple of glasses, I put on some music, CDs that I’ve burned that are pretty much an anthology of the music that defined our relationship and we started dancing in the living room. We were quite the dancers in our day (don’t I sound old?), at one point there was actually a local club owner that made a deal with us; if we came and danced, he’d let us drink for free.
We went there a lot.
Jim got home from work at about 10:30 (car sales, you stay till the last customer is served. Period.) and certainly wasn’t surprised that we were drunk and dancing in the living room. Being a good sport, he promptly tossed back a six pack and joined in the raucous fun, (sans the dancing – he’s “too big to make the face”).
We drank all the wine and all the beer, skipped dinner and at about midnight starting making phony phone calls; a time honored, cherished tradition, to our other friend Jackie. She was very jealous that we were all together, but didn’t think our phone calls were as drop dead funny as we did. Might have something to do with the fact that we had, at that point consumed enough alcohol to make just about anything hysterically funny. The fun ended about 2:30, Dale went into bed, dead tired from being on the road all day, and more than a little drunk.
I have been feeling a little out of sorts lately and yesterday I woke up in a horrible mood; sad, depressed and a bit lonely. Dale was exactly the medicine I needed. It’s wonderful to have such a terrific friend. Through the years, we’ve laughed and cried, suffered through each others losses and celebrated the triumphs. I have missed him so very much and it will be wonderful to have him so close. The road from Ocala to Miami might seem a long one to others, but I’m a big fan of the “Road Trip” and three hundred miles is a small price to pay for such company.
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