Meet My Girls

After all my soul-searching this week, I have come to realize that some of the very best friends I have go way back to my childhood in Panama City, Florida. These are the girls I stayed with when we went to my recent 40th high school reunion. Yesterday I came up with an idea to “collect” pieces of our past and present and make a collage of photos for each of us.

Although FL and I go back to kindergarten, our earliest “group” shot was done in a 25-cent kiosk on Daytona Beach during the summer of 1966. We got 4 shots for $1, then snipped them apart so that each of us had one. According to the others, I was pissed that FL got the best picture, but then she turned around and gave us each a copy for Christmas. I seem to be the only one who still has that picture. We were in Daytona just for the day, driving over from Gainesville where we were staying in FL’s grandmother’s cottage on Swan Lake with an 80-year-old chaperone. My guy friends came down from Tallahassee to visit, bringing us a fifth of vodka and going skinny-dipping in the lake in the moonlight. I can only think that the chaperone was already asleep by then. It was a great summer when hormones were raging and we were all preparing to be seniors and graduate.

Here we are on graduation night posing in Mollie’s living room. Her Dad took the picture and then we each got a copy. I was too vain to wear my glasses, although I’m sure I needed them just as much as Ina did. We all looked like we had all the answers, when in fact we didn’t even know what the questions were.

Under those white graduation robes was a tiny felt daisy, symbolic of our chapter of YVA, Young Virgins of America, with the motto “Daisies never tell!” FL’s boyfriend John said the whole thing sucked, even though it was just in fun and girls who obviously were not eligible looked as us and grimaced, but what in the world did we care at age 17? We were soon enough going to discover that virginity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway.

So fast-forward 40 years and you find the same 4 girls staying in a condo on precisely the spot where we used to drink beer on the beach when we were in high school. The white sand is just the same, the feet are the same size, but they are 40 years older and just a little tired.


And prior to the reunion itself, where were we? Of course, back in Mollie’s house posing in front of that same wall, but unfortunately her Dad was no longer around to take the picture. Instead my husband and her brother were the photographers, while her Mom beamed at how beautiful her daughter still is today.

Although we’ve gone our separate ways and had both good and not so good experiences, it takes only about 5 minutes for us to pick up where we left off. These are definitely my girls and I love them all so much!