But This Is How We Communicate

And from the file labeled "conversations that I could not make up" here's another one that really happened:

HIM: So do I give the puppy one of the white pills now?

ME: Well, if you give her a white one now, we can give her one of the brown ones about mid-day, then save a white one for bedtime. Of course, you can give her a white one now, another one in 8 hours and still be able to have one for bedtime, so maybe we don't have to give her a brown one at all. You can give her both white and brown now, even, but then we have to make sure we time it out, cause she can only have the brown one twice a day and can have the white one every 8 hours. But since the white one seems a little stronger, maybe we should just stop the brown one altogether?

HIM: So do I give the puppy one of the white pills now?

Reunited

Some good did come from the two days of wake and funeral for my cousin Judy, and that was getting to see my cousin Jeffrey again. Jeff and I are only a year apart in age and we grew up together. He is actually my first cousin once removed (the child of my first cousin) but our close age and the closeness of our families at that time meant that we were together a lot. We stood up together in my sister's wedding (I was 6 and he was 5), and spent many weekends at my aunt's cottage on the lake. Jeff and his parents moved to Connecticut when he was 11 and I hadn't seen him in over 30 years. In all that time, I had always remembered him and thought of all the fun we'd had as children. From the moment we saw each other across the room, there was that flash of recognition and we spent the time together, afraid to let each other out of sight. The amazing part was that he remembered me the same way I remembered him.

Back in the 70's, when they moved away, pre-teens didn't have a lot of options to staying in contact. You could write letters, sure, but who really did that? You could call on the phone, but the cost of long-distance calls was an issue. Now, we can communicate so much more easily, through calls, texting, email, skype, twitter, facebook. This time, I have all his contact info and I plan to use it.