Theresa Paolo

Just a quick post today.

Friday night I got a text message from my best friend, two hours after she dropped me off from the gym, to let me know that she just got engaged. ENGAGED! My best friend since the lst grade is engaged. It makes me feel old. Very, very old. It still feels likes yesterday when we met. Well maybe not yesterday but definitely not the nineteen years it has been.

It was the first day of first grade and as I sat in Mrs. Vandlindt's class eagerly awaiting her to begin teaching she approached me with a girl whose thick glasses only magnified the tears in her swollen eyes. "This is Rosie," she had said. "She misses her mommy. If she sits next to you will you be her best friend?" I was always eager to please back then so of course I shook my head over enthusiastically and began talking to Rosie. Her tears dried up and within seconds she started talking back to me. And as they say the rest is history.

I wonder if Mrs. Vandlindt had any idea that she put in motion a friendship that would last through the pettiness of middle school, the drama of high school and the rollercoaster of becoming an adult. Rosie, or Roe as I now call her, is my oldest friend and I have Mrs. Vandlindt to thank. It's been nineteen years and I can't wait to see what life has in store for us next.