Yes­ter­day evening I got to spend some time with an old friend, T. It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to sit more than an hour and talk … which typ­i­cally would be dur­ing the annual Chicago Comi­con when both of us would be “in town.”

T was always a gra­cious host. Charming.

I say “in town” because before last year, T would fly in from the west coast (or even over­seas!) while Hubby & I would drive from Detroit. Yes, we’re that much of comic-​​geeks (well, rather Hubby & T are) to go yearly to Chicago for the past 5-​​plus years now.

Now, as of two months ago … we’re all in the same state and within one hour of each other. And because Hubby’s been help­ing him (as well as me) set up his own web­site (still under con­struc­tion, BTW) to pro­mote his own comic, the two of them have been “chatty” lately.

And see­ing that *I* knew T before Hubby ever did … well, yeah. I was feel­ing a lit­tle left out. So yes­ter­day, when I knew the two of them were meet­ing up in Evanston, I made sure that they’d stick around long enough for me to meet them after I got off work.

See­ing T again after a cou­ple years (he never made it out to last year’s comi­con, and we opted for San Diego the year before) was nice. It had me reflect­ing over the first day as a uni­ver­sity stu­dent, mov­ing into my dorm. I hap­pened to first meet him in line while wait­ing to get my school ID taken.

Even though he claims we met back in high school my fresh­man year  after Track prac­tice when I asked a mutual friend of ours if they had seen my brother. T even insists that I told him to look out for Dr. Bro’s “sh*tty brown car.”

Future-​​SIL, T and me (from right to left) … Look how skinny I was!! Sigh …

Which of course, makes me chuckle because that would totally be some­thing I would have said.  Unfor­tu­nately I only have a very vague rec­ol­lec­tion of that mem­ory. Which is why *I* still claim that we first met that first day I started in college.

“Hey,” T said to me. “Aren’t you [Dr. Bro’s real name] lit­tle sister?”

“Yeah,” I answered, as I crin­kled my nose.

And every time we see each other, T has to bring up that story. Just to  remind me on how “offended” I looked when he asked me that ques­tion. And then I have to remind him how in high school I was always known as Dr. Bro’s “younger sis­ter.” And here, on the first day at a new school, I imme­di­ately get rec­og­nized as being related to Dr. Bro. Again.

After those awk­ward first words, we found out that he’d even­tu­ally be mov­ing into the same dorm that I’d be in and that we should “hang out” some­time. So after­wards, I ran up to my room and told future-​​SIL** that I just met my first new col­lege friend.

Once T moved into our dorm (prob­a­bly about a week after that first meet­ing), the three of us became quick friends. Future-​​SIL and I would pester him mer­ci­lessly and, for some strange rea­son, he would put up with us. Then there would be the count­less times we’d end up in his room late at night play­ing poker for pen­nies and  … uhm, yeah … other college-​​related “expe­ri­ences. (Oh come on now … I wasn’t that bad, but it was my first year in col­lege after spend­ing 12 years in Catholic school!)

T show­ing off his Chi­nese yoyo skills

Like, for instance, the time he called us on our dorm phone and whis­pered oh-​​so-​​quietly, “Does the wind blow at mid­nite?” In which he later came up at mid­night with one of those industrial-​​sized roles of toi­let paper from the com­mu­nal bath­room on his floor. And brought it up to Future-​​SIL and my dorm room. Which was the cor­ner room. Of the top floor of our build­ing. And we pro­ceeded to … uhm … let the wind carry the whole roll of toi­let paper out­side of our dorm room. Which then pro­ceeded to wrap around our entire dorm build­ing. TWICE. !!!

Any­way, my point being is that T is one of those long time friends that, regard­less where we are (both in loca­tion and in what­ever stage) in life, we pick up wher­ever we left off.

And that’s a com­fort­ing thought in the midst of chaos or tranquility.

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Eesh. Why does the last few days of Lent seem like for­ever? Here’s my daily Lenten bit.

Look closely at the yoyo above me … Hmmph!

Good Deed of the Day: Does going into work for an extra day count as a good deed? If it means that I was able to give some extra feed­back and encour­age­ment and to my staff, then methinks it does!

Grate­ful Thought of the Day: I think this one’s obvi­ous today. I’m grate­ful for friends where it’s as if we’ve never skipped a beat. It could be as sim­ple as not hav­ing seen each other in a long time. Or it could be as unique as meet­ing in per­son for the very first time, but feel­ing as if we’ve known each other for­ever.  Those are true friendships.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** What? You didn’t know?! I may have, in a pre­vi­ous post men­tion that my SIL and I were col­lege roo­mates the first two years at university.

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