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I HAVE AN AWESOME GIFT!  I'm sure there are many other persons with such a gift, but there are many more who do not have an LTF. You likely don't know what that is, an LTF.  In fact, you may be puzzling over this right now, asking yourself if it would possibly be a Little Tiny Frog or a Lovely Trailing Fern. Maybe a Luckily-won Trip to the Fiji Islands! You can't see me shaking my head and rolling my eyes just a bit, but you're not even close. Now, on the other hand, if you were to think: It must be a Long-Time Friend, you would be verging on wow-you're-right!

What I have isn't just a long-time one, but a Life-Time Friend. It's very special to possess such a gift because you realize, Dear Reader, that if you do not get started at the beginning, it's impossible to back up and make a Life-Time Friend out of anyone--dear and well-loved as they may be.  It's imperative that they started the journey with you.  (If this were a James Michener-style book, I'd be taking you back to life at conception, and the friendship with my womb mate.  But he is my twin, my brother.  This LTF is a girlfriend of mine). Yes, Sylvia and I have known each other since our names hung side-by-side on the Cradle Roll at church, since she was a one-month-old, since we toddled. Long before we started school together, we tea-partied with Malinda under the ancient, majestic Oak in the field by her house.  (Perhaps it was an Elm? It is long gone, but never to be forgotten). At school we jumped on the jumping boards together, hula-hooped, huddled around a radio in the classroom as Russia sent up Sputnik. We thanked those mothers, busy cleaning up after serving the school lunches, for the good good good good good good good diiii-ners. Sylvia and I, we turned an empty rabbit hutch into our secret playhouse. Summer after summer we went to Bible School. We learned of Little Wang Foo in China. Sunday after Sunday, (it nearly goes without saying) we went to Sunday School. And my LTF, she asked the teacher What does fornication mean? The poor teacher blushed and stammered; she did not answer the question. We slumber-partied. Oh, how we slumber-partied. We pondered the tragic deaths of our classmates, Joe and Milton and Susie. We walked for miles on Sunday afternoons, and schemed and dreamed together. Oh, how we schemed and dreamed. We listened to the Beach Boys. On Friday nights we followed Robert's Rules of Order (Dear Reader, this was during meetings of the Literary Society, and I would explain, Reader Dear,  if ever I thought I could do it in ten thousand words or less). We sunbathed on the pier. We listened to the Beatles sing I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Glad All Over. At Ferguson High, we read El Camino Real for Mr. Cox, and listened with horror one November day as Mr. Byrd, our English teacher, burst into the classroom and exclaimed "The president's been shot! I'm not kidding--the president's been shot!" We wrote volumes of notes to one another during the classes we did not share, and passed them back and forth in the hallways. Watched TV on her family's set, constantly fiddling with the color dial to give the orange-faced people a decent human hue. For our senior year, we moved away from home and into the dorm of a private high school miles and miles away. We listened to The Mamas and the Papas. We then went to college together when it was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Ah, and there is so much more. So much more to the story of my LTF and me! All that I've written would be but a blurb on the dust-jacket of the book we could write together.

As it turns out, it's only the blurb on the Happy Birthday blog I'm posting for her. It's been a few years since our days on Colony and Lucas Creek Roads, but I won't tell anyone how many. I'm just going to say: Happiest of birthdays to you, my dear LTF!





(Oh, and of course--there was also Joan Baez,
who sings my wishes for you)
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