Friends are a Dime a Dozen

Friendship. What is it really? No matter who you ask, you will walk away with a different definition.  I believe friendship is a relationship between two people who hold a mutual affection for each other.  It is a tendency to desire what is best for the other. It requires honesty, even in situations where it may be difficult to speak the truth. There is a mutual understanding and compassion; to have the ability to go to each other  for emotional support. The trust of one another. To feel free enough to be yourself, express your feelings and make mistakes without fear of judgment.  Someone you enjoy spending time with and it is not a chore to do so. Someone that no matter how much time has passed, you feel like you just left off yesterday.

I truly share that with one person. I know in my heart, one phone call, no matter what time of the day it is, she would figure out how to be there for me and I for her.

Friends come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are placed in your life for a reason. They meet a need expressed by guiding and supporting you perhaps  assisting you through a difficult time. But without warning, something happens and they move on.

Some friends are placed in your life for a season.  You meet them and you enjoy time spent together. They bring joy to your life and help you grow or learn new things, but the newness wears off and the season is over. They move on.

Friends though that you have for a lifetime, teach you lessons that help build a solid emotional foundation. You accept the lesson and still love the person, but take those lessons learned into other relationships and areas of your life.

I have been blessed to have many people fill one of those spots in my life at one time or another.  Those that entered for a reason, I consider my angels, as they helped  me stand on my feet when I had no legs to support me.

For those that entered for a season, they brought a ray of sunshine into my life when the skies were gray with no light at the end of the tunnel.

For those that have been a lifetime friend, they have been my inner strength when I have felt my weakest and they provide me warmth in my heart that I am able to share with so many, when I play the role of one who enters an other's life for a reason or a season.

Tina Marie is my lifetime friend. She has taught me what true friendship is all about.  It is not to say that we have not had difficult times in our friendship, but we know, no matter what, we will always be there come hell or high water.  It is not a high maintenance friendship.  We don't talk on the phone at all. We text, email and visit, but we have gone months with no contact and when we get together, it feels like we just saw each other yesterday.

We lived together for about eighteen months and I don't remember any thing that we could not work through.  When we both got married, we promised each other that when we were old and widowed, we'd live together again, on a beach.  I've reached that stage, a little earlier than expected, but I am widowed and I keep nudging her to remind her of our pact twenty years ago.  I'm ready for the beach.

My Mother and Killer always told me you don't have friends, you have acquaintances. My Mother had a close friend when she was a child and has never had a "friend" since.  She had her sisters, but was only close to one of them.  I was her friend, the one she confided in and shared her joy and sorrow with.  Killer didn't have friends either.  He didn't like people to get to close to him.

So with that frame work, I have kept my inner circle very tight.  I am not one to have a lot of friends. I do not make it my goal in life to get to know everyone nor do I have the desire to "socialize."  I have people in my life that make me go to functions where many others are, but I have few that I extend my friendship to. 

I think it is because I have been disappointed in people who I would have considered a friend.  Some one that I invested time in and in turn was taken advantage of.  I am not quick to judge, I give them plenty of opportunity to correct the situation, but there comes a point that I draw the line and once it is drawn, there is no erasing it. I used to draw that line much sooner than I do now.  I have Tina Marie to thank for teaching me patience with some people.

When I moved away from Michigan, I knew no one in Indiana.  I met a few people and I became friendly with them, but I met someone who was very much like me and I thought I had another friend for life.  I was mistaken.

I hired Cheryl when I worked at Lumberman's.  She had just turned forty when she started working for me.  She had been in insurance, but had just had gall bladder surgery and was looking for a new desk to return to, one that was not with her former employer.

We hit it off immediately.  We had the same sense of humor.  Most people could not tell us apart on the phone as our delivery of conversation was similar.  We both could find fun in a cardboard box and we loved a good bargain when we shopped.

She was married with three girls. Her husband built custom homes, but the market fell out and he was struggling.  They owned a "lake house" in Wisconsin. I would call it a  cottage, but if you were trying to impress, "lake house" sounded so much more affluent.

Cheryl grew up here, in Indianapolis.  She knew everyone and she made it her goal to know every one's business.  I wouldn't have asked you a question about your personal life if my own life depended on it, but Cheryl taught me that people like to talk about themselves, so ask away and I do now, but I still have some boundaries, she didn't.

A weekend in Frankenmuth

She often said what I was thinking when we first started working together.  She was the one that wondered just what Larry did.  I was curious but she was determined to find out and she did.  She got cozy with the woman in our unit that Larry used to date and she got the scoop on how he operated.

I find it difficult to be social with people I do not care for.  I can not be friendly to your face and stab you in the back. It just isn't me, but I work in a industry where people are like that. If there is one thing people will say about me, it is, they know exactly where they stand with me.  I do not mix words. If I have a beef with you, you know it and if I like you, you know that too.  Again, nicest person in the world, until you....

Cheryl had been employed for less than six months when she went home one day unexpectedly.  In the mail, she found notices that her husband had not been paying the mortgage and they were in trouble financially.  She did not have any idea what their bills were, he took care of all of that.

I have always taken care of the finances.  How can you not know, was my question.  She confronted him and he promised  he'd get it taken care of.  She was a complete train wreck. While she would tell you that material things did not mean any thing to her, her home told a different story.  I think she learned to not become attached to material things as they can be removed without your knowledge or approval.

Fun in the office

Within the year, she thought everything was resolved to only go home again unexpectedly to answer the phone and discover the mortgage had not been paid.  They lived in a huge custom built home that her husband had built in a very exclusive little nook in Washington Township. 

She had to find a home to move her children and she feared that her kids would be made fun of if their friends came over to any thing less than what they were currently living in.  Tell me that is  not someone who worships material things.  She had to find a home in the same township so her children did not have to change schools. She wanted to find a home that she could pay cash for and not have to worry about the mortgage ever not being paid. She found one.  They were putting their house on the market, but she had lost her maid and apparently three teenage girls can not do house work, so I offered to come over and help her clean so the house was presentable for the market.

The yard was beautiful, custom landscaped, but Cheryl did not do yard work and her husband was too depressed when they had to let the landscape company stop maintaining their yard. Chappy and I loved yard work, so we spent a couple weekends over there trimming bushes so you could see the house and cleaning up the yard.  That is what friends do, they help you out when you are in need.

Cheryl

I helped her move, strip wallpaper, paint, remodel, unpack, I was there to help her through this difficult time.  We became very close.  Not only did we work together, but we were friends outside of work.  We took girl weekends and traveled to Michigan to shop or just get away.  We were inseparable.

She and I would go to Michigan and stay one night at Min's.  When I'd tell stories of Min, Cheryl couldn't believe it, until she met her and she agreed, Min had it out for me. She hit the nail on the head, Min acts like she likes you when Chappy is around, but watch her, she'll cut your throat and watch you bleed in the end.  She was right.

Even when I moved away from Indiana, Cheryl would come visit for girl weekends and we'd laugh like school girls over the craziest things, but some thing changed.  She ended up divorcing her husband while I was in Georgia years later. She had an affair with a married man.  She got fired from Lumberman's for not doing her work.  She lost her mind, like I did, when I left Killer.

A girls get away in Naples, FL

When I returned to Indiana years later, she was unemployed.  She had exhausted her unemployment and she was desperate for a job, any job. I hired  her again, but she was not the person I had hired six years earlier.  She had been my right hand. I could depend on her no matter what.  I should have known things were different.

For  in the midst of my weakest moment, I reached out to her for help.  I needed someone to talk to and she knew that facts of the situation better than I knew them myself.  I was hanging on by a thin, thin thread that was unraveling at the speed of light.  I called her one day at work, I was beside myself and as I started to drown in my own tears and sorrow, she cut me off and told me, "Some of us have to work, I don't have time for this" and hung up.  I never let  her forget that day after I got back on my feet.  Perhaps it was a wake up call for me that no matter what, I stand alone. But I didn't draw the line in the sand, I let it slide.  I hired  her to work for me again. I helped her out of the pit she had fallen into and then she exposed her true colors to me.

I was under a lot of pressure in a new job and she knew it.  She still had to be in every one's business and every morning she spent at least a half a hour on the phone to friends.  One particular morning I informed her that she needed to work instead of spending time on personal calls and she needed to stay at her desk, instead of roaming the building catching up on every one's drama.  The next day, she continued her routine as if I had said nothing.  We had always been able to conduct ourselves knowing business was business and friendship was friendship and not cross that line of disrespect.  I heard her chatting to another woman who was a friend of hers, but also worked on another floor in the building.  I walked back to her cubicle to let her know, I could hear that she was not conducting business and then her voice lowered to a whisper and she continued to chat.

She knew I had the ability to go into the phone system and listen to telephone calls.  I returned to her desk and motioned for her to get off the phone, there was work that needed to be done and she turned the chair so her back faced me.  

I returned to my office and I waited until she got off the phone and then I called the system to listen to her conversation.  I thought I knew who she was on the phone to, but I was about to call her on the carpet, so I needed to confirm my suspicions.  She was on the phone to the other woman in the office and after I had left her desk and her voiced lowered to a whisper, the message  was sent, the line in the sand had been drawn by me and it would never be erased. For on that day, she said to this other employee, after I told her to get off the phone, "If that fucking bitch doesn't leave me alone...I swear, if I had a gun, I'd kill her."  The other voice spoke in whispers too, "You don't really mean that."  And Cheryl responded, "oh yes I do."

She came into my office after she hung the phone up and found me on the phone.  She did not know I was listening to the conversation she had just hung up on.  The anger rose in my soul.  This person who I had considered a friend, had crossed the line.  I looked up at her and in a voice she had only heard me use on others, informed her to get out of my office and back to work.

She thought I was joking and I rose from my chair and got as close as one could get to her and said again, "I told you to get out of my office and back to work and I do not want to have to repeat myself." And like her, I turned my back on her.

She walked immediately to the end office where my superior sat and slammed the door.  The walls in the office shook.  People stood up to see what was going on and within minutes, she returned to her desk in tears.  My boss called and asked me to come to his  office.  I did, with the information of what time the call took place so that he could listen to it.

He asked me what was going on and I explained, very calmly and then I handed him the sheet and asked him to call up that conversation.  He looked at me with surprise. He knew Cheryl and I were close outside of the office.  He listened to the call and was taken back by the message.

"What was that all about?"

"I don't know and I don't care, but I am here to report, I want this reported to Human Resources.  One could take that as a threat on my life."

"You don't think she really meant it do you?"

"I really don't know her any longer.  I am going to report it, just in case she ever brings a gun to work."  

I realized that day, friends are a dime a dozen.  True friends are as rare as a 1943 zinc coated steel penny. If you were lucky to find one, you best hold on to it as it had value.