Friends

Growing up I had several close friends. One or two, I would classify as Anne/Diana friendships. You know, from Anne of Green Gables. We might be incredibly different, but something just clicked. And I have been blessed to have one of these freindships continue despite living in opposite corners of the country more than we've lived in the same town.

Today she emailed me this. She's the better writer. I keep telling her to sit down and write up some of her experiences. She doens't listen to me...Sigh. For some reason she thinks she knows herself better than I do...Grin.

So here 's her email...


I was looking back through some old writings and found this story. I'm thinking
as I'm reading it, Man, I don't remember this at all, and you think I
would...where are those old pictures anyway? Then at the end I realized why...

June 15, 1996 (Cara here: she must have come to visit us in DC, although the mention of the convention center throws me a bit. But I know she wasn't in San Diego for the '96 Republican Convention with me... Oh I know, she was up for a seminar...)

After lunch, Cara stops at a photo booth. "You want to?" she grins.

"You," I observe, "are crazy."

"Oh, come on; it’ll be fun!"

I climb into the tiny compartment after her. I read the instructions out loud while she attempts to cram a couple of crumpled bills into the money slot: "‘Pick background.’ What background do we want, red or blue?"

"Blue. This one won’t go in there; maybe this one…"

"‘Adjust seat hight until eye level with green light. Insert money…’"

"There! Smile!" The screen ahead of us explodes in a white flash. "We’ve got to do a crazy one!" Cara insists. She sticks her tongue out. I cross my eyes. FLASH. I move my hand with
fingers extended into a V behind her head. She ducks. FLASH. We just plain grin. FLASH. We groan and blindly extricate ourselves from the compartment.

"‘Pictures will be delivered here in five minutes.’"

We wait. I treat Cara to a gumball. Her mouth turns blue. Mine, green. Several minutes later,
the booth spits out four prints. "Here they are! Wait, these aren’t us…"

And they aren’t. There are two photos of a black lady and then two with her and two kids. Not us. We wait four more minutes by my watch I pull out of my pocket to check occasionally. Nothing. Cara is bummed. We walk back to the convention center.