Real Live Girlfriends: Great Sage Part 2

Most of my high school lunches were spent at the same rectangular table, with the same girls, eating the same lunch, drinking the same yellow Powerade. And it was because I’d wanted a group of girlfriends who would totally be in my wedding (they weren’t) that this lunchtime situation was ideal. I knew exactly where I fit in, even when I felt like I didn’t.

But life went on, as it tends to do, and things got tough, and I no longer have lunch with most of those girls. In fact, I don’t have lunch with many girls period. I went from being someone with a ton of friends to someone with a few really fantastic friends, and I much preferred it that way.

While I was evolving into this solo eater, someone was inventing Facebook just so I could see how many of my girlfriends of yore still lunched together. OK, I’ve seen The Social Network, and I get that my misery wasn’t the sole reason for its invention, but you gotta admit that the movie (even if it’s based on mashup of mostly fiction muddled with some fact) does sort of suggest that the pain of former relationships spawned Facebook and keeps it going. C’mon! You know you spend at least some (if not half, if not all) of your Facebook time stalking old friends, former lovers, or the can-you-believe-she-looks-like-that-ers?

Seeing so many of my old girlfriends still sitting at the proverbial lunch table was strange and painful. Some days I felt like I’d been lost in the mail. When I returned to my real life, I quickly realized how fleeting the emotions were.  I was lucky to have actual live people in the here and now, and so while I can’t say I don’t twinge I when I see the lunch table girlfriends smiling in matching dresses at various weddings, I also know I’ve moved on.

To a smaller table.

To one where there are no dead animals.

To one where I get share hours of real live conversation with real live girlfriends.

I bring up the lunch table stories, of which I can assure you there will be more, because Gena often lets me gripe about blogs. And yes, I realize this is technically a blog.

One of my main complaints is that I would in theory like to know someone in person before I can call that person a BFF. You know, share a (lunch) table, break bread, cry, scream, share clothes, whatever. Basically I find in-person friendships to be far superior to virtual ones.

And that’s pretty much why I feel like hugging someone when they ask what I did this weekend.

Hello, World! I shared a dinner table with Gena and Valerie. In person. I may have seen them both a bunch of times before, but it was this dinner at Great Sage (requiring an hour trip by car) that cemented my minor obsession with them both. You can read Gena’s stunningly good recap here. Don’t you find her writing poetic? I do.

We may have eaten the same salads with the same really odd cashew cheese, but we are not at all the same. We share common interests – in food, animal rights, and politics – and yet we manage to express ourselves in very different ways.

Gena and I have much in common, starting with a love of books and a love affair that begins with a brown dress and Bonobos in NYC. We are also quick to recognize that our similarities differ in their own ways. For instance, I adore that we can immediately acknowledge that while we might both be writers, our styles are insanely different. We laughed over that in a way only two people entrenched in a world of words could. I love that.

As for Valerie, she came into my life when I needed someone who got me, and she was always writing me perfect emails saying, “You have no idea how much I relate to that.” The thing is: Val’s a damn good blogger AND she holds down a full-time career as a lawyer. So in terms of day-to-day life events, we have very little in common. And yet we get each other. I love that.

Great Sage Part 2 was just as delicious as Great Sage Part 1. Turns out that what I was really hungry for some good conversation with girlfriends.