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I HAVE AN OLD FRIEND. A GOOD OLD FRIEND. Her birthday is about two weeks before mine. In fact, her day of birth was about two weeks before mine, making her (just as I said) good and old! But, you know, Dear Reader, what I really meant to say is that Tina is a good, long-time friend of mine. I only mentioned her birthday because that is one reason why I spent the lunch hour with her today. We were jointly celebrating another year...celebrating our days of birth, jointly...celebrating our (somewhat) adjoining birthdays. Oh, please say you get it, already!

Tina and I eat together occasionally, often at places near where she works. But for today's lunch, we thought we'd step it up a notch. We took a little more time, went to a classier restaurant than is our usual custom. And we ordered two fancy desserts and shared them. It was a delightful birthday lunch, and when the waitress asked, "One bill or two?" we said two--because, of course, since we were both celebrating, we'd both be paying.

So our waitress brought us two black books (I told you we were in a fancy restaurant). We opened our wallets, and Tina put her driver's license inside one black book. "Oh," she laughed. "Look what I just did." She pulled a credit card from her wallet and got ready to make the switch.

But I was struck with a funny idea. "Let's BOTH do it--each of us put our driver's license in the book!" I suggested. "We ARE old, you know! Let's see how our waitress reacts."

Dear Reader, now that I'm actually telling you about it, I can see that it sounds less like old age and more like adolescence, but that's what we did! And we got a kick out of our silly stunt as we did it; but then we got back into our conversation and sort of forgot about it. Our waitress walked by on her way to the kitchen and scooped up the books.

She was quite a while in coming back, that waitress of ours, and I was starting to feel kind of sorry for giving her an extra trip to the table. When she did show up, with slightly raised eyebrows, she gave us a look and said, "Uhm, I'm going to need more than these--you each gave me a driver's license!" She was playing it safe--perhaps we really had BOTH made the same mistake?! She was chuckling a little.

Ha, ha. We chuckled back in a slightly sheepish way, but admitted nothing. Of course, the moment she disappeared with our credit cards, we had a good laugh at our goofy gag. We had more time for chatting before she returned the credit charges with a pen for our signatures. We thanked her, and 'Have a nice day!'s were exchanged; then our waitress went on her busy way.

I signed my check, passed the pen to Tina, and put away my credit card. Tina signed her check and was sliding her credit card into her wallet. Suddenly she was laughing again. "I have YOUR driver's license!" she said.

"Really?" I opened my wallet and pulled out the driver's license--sure enough, it was Tina's! Examining the invoices we'd signed, we discovered our waitress had reversed the charges; we'd each paid for the other's lunch. (Hmm, had our waitress played her own little trick?) And we had so nearly gone our separate ways identified as each other!

"I don't know WHEN I would have noticed," Tina said, "I don't need my driver's license very often." We were having a grand time, laughing.

"I don't either," I said. "It's hard to tell when I would have gotten mine out and discovered YOU there!" I thought about it briefly and added, "Oh, I wish that would have happened!"
Then (in spite of that slight disappointment) we went merrily on our separate ways, and the extra laughter we had enjoyed put the icing on the (birthday) cake (so to speak) for two good and old, good old friends!


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