Grocery store epiphany

My good friend Jamie traveled to the 'shwa this weekend for a visit. We hadn't seen each other since my wedding (almost 7 months ago) so a visit was long overdue.

Jamie and I met in residence at university. We met the first week of school in her first year (my second year), but didn't really start to be close friends until the night of my 20th birthday a couple of weeks after that.

The night of my birthday a big crew of people from our residence went to the bar that night to celebrate my birthday, and we all consumed way too many $6.50 triples (served in mini pitchers) and we danced up a storm. My then boyfriend decided he didn't dance (loser!) and decided to watch from the sidelines. I had gone out to dance that night, and figured his non-participation left me free to dance with whomever I chose, so dance I did - with the girls, with the guys, and on the speakers.

On the walk back to residence my boyfriend started an argument about me dancing with male friends, so I decided when we got back that I'd blow him off and send him home. I gave him his marching orders (he'd travelled to see me) and, being in a less than sober state I started hanging out with friends in the hallway, with him still there. I could piss the boyfriend off as he was leaving because I was still having fun, and I could hang out with friends. Jamie was down the hall, and getting help from another friend on a physics lab so I hung out with them.

Since that night we've been great friends, including midnight trips to the 24 hour grocery store, more nights out at the bar, sobering each other up with crackers, long drives home, and a ton of inside jokes only funny to the two of us. Our younger days were filled with tons of partying. We were always relatively responsible, but we always had fun. Even having lost touch for a while we've always been able to pick up where we left off.

This weekend was no exception. We hit the grocery store and wandered around aimlessly selecting items for dinner, picked out frozen drinks, and laughed the whole way through the store catching up. As we were going through the produce section, I decided to pick up a few lemons. With Dave and I getting ready to sell our current house, and a realtor coming over to appraise it, I kinda figured a nice big bowl of lemons would make a pretty centerpiece on our kitchen table.

After having hit every aisle of the giant grocery store, reminiscing the whole way, laughing and talking about our wilder and crazier days, we hit the checkout. As we were loading items onto the belt, we both paused for a second. Funny how the stuff we'd bought was the same sort of stuff we'd bought years before. Jamie joked that thing missing was the jello for making shots, but when we put the lemons on the belt that's when it hit us both. Irrefutable proof we were getting older.

In our younger days, a bag of 8 lemons would have been bought solely for the purpose of tequila shots. Now they were being bought as decorations to spruce up house that's for sale.


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The good thing about being older, though is that you have blenders to make fabulous drinks, and fresh rolls can be made faster when you've got a food processor. Getting older isn't all that bad, and memory lane sure is fun.