MY STORY:
Several years ago, a strange thing happened to my husband and me. We took an uneventful hike in a nearby park. After our hike, we decided to take a short-cut along a street, to get to our car. As we walked, I noticed a dollar bill floating down the street. I picked it up, and it was then that we noticed more money blowing down the sidewalk. A lot more money… $10, then $20. Then more. So we chased the money and picked it all up. We must have looked ridiculous chasing money blowing down the street!
Having worked in television, my first thought was that we were on a hidden camera show, or Punk’d! But we looked around and we were alone. No cameras hiding in the woods. No people around.
My second thought was, where the heck did this money come from? There were no houses nearby. No cars. No people. No wallet, no backpack. Nothing except money blowing around. Strange.
My third thought was, let’s count it! It turned out to be $385! Crazy. So what did we do?…
Sorry! This is where I am going to pause my story. I am not going to tell you what we did with that money. I think I’ll let that remain a mystery. Or save it for another post.
The real reason of this post, isn’t that we found money. So what is it about?
Fast forward 15 years. One crisp, autumn morning, my friend Amy and I met for a walk on a nearby hiking trail. Amy and I have been best friends since way back when they called middle school, “junior high”. If you are too young to remember that, don’t tell me! Suffice it to say that we met a long time ago!
This particular fall day, we were walking and chatting about life, kids, and probably what TV show was on the night before.
Something about being on the hike or the crispness of the air must have triggered a memory for Amy. Because all of sudden, she said to me, “Do you remember that time Dan and I (Dan is her husband), found money blowing down the street? That was awesome”.
She continued, “we were taking a hike, like this, and we found a lot of money. I remember single dollars, and twenty-dollar bills too. And no one was around.” She added, “did I ever tell you about that?”
For a minute, I thought she was kidding. But she was serious. Then I wondered if it had happened to her too? That would be odd. The same story? I told her that she never told me about that.
And I asked her for more details. And she proceeded to tell me MY DETAILS! MY STORY!
I said, “I think you’re thinking of my story”. “No”, she said, “I clearly remember it”.
By this time, I was laughing. Could she really have mixed up our stories? But she was adamant that it had happened to her. So I had her call her husband and ask him. Sure enough, he had no idea what she was talking about. It didn’t happen to her, it happened to me! I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that we were both laughing pretty hard by then.
The whole thing is pretty funny and amazing too. That after all these years of friendship, and all these years that we have shared our feelings, secrets, events… shared our lives with each other, that we have gotten to the point of forgetting whose story is whose!
A sign of old age? Maybe.
A sign of a great friendship? Definitely!
Something we still laugh about? You bet your ass we do!
I like to remind Amy about it every once in a while because I am pretty sure that one day, I will be the one to say “Hey Amy, do you remember that time that I…? And I will recount one of her stories, that I think happened to me!
i miss having a best friend around all the time. I moved from my comfort zone over a year ago and I just haven’t found that person here that I totally click with. It’s harder when you are older to “communicate’. Great read!
I agree. I haven’t made great friends now, like I did when I was younger. It’s much harder to connect when you are older!