Sharon is shh...50!

On the first day of my new job in the city's recreation department, I met Sharon. It wasn't one of those handshakes, nice-to-meet-you formal greetings. Instead, she came barreling into the front office where I was working the front desk like an undercover police officer. Arms raised, hands in gun position and pointing straight to the sky, and she took cover on the other side of the wall before popping out, aiming her gun fingers over my shoulder and yelling, Freeze!" to the invisible intruders. 

We've been friends ever since. 

And we may or may not have spent quite a bit of our free time chasing bad guys and traffic offenders in her blue Toyota truck, screaming the siren sounds as if we were legit. Or following suspicious people in the mall and grocery, recording their activities in nonexisting notebooks, and communicating via pretend walkie-talkies. 

The 1990's Cagney and Lacey. Or better yet, Starsky and Hutch.

She was eighteen years old and worldly. I was seven years older and living on my own for the first time. We complimented each other perfectly. Still do. Sharon is the one person who senses when I need a pick-me-up and gives me a call. She can make me laugh harder than anyone else I know. 

This year she turned fifty! Sharon! Fifty! She hardly looks any different than the day I met her. Truly. It's scary. 

To celebrate this milestone, we spent the weekend on Clearwater Beach in one of my Wyndham resorts. We haven't seen each other in a couple of years due to the pandemic and her life raising and homeschooling two teenage boys. We invited Maddy and Darcy to tag along, but Darcy had a weekend conference in Orlando for a weekend conference. She and her friends came Friday for dinner.

Darcy: "Let me warn you now. My mom and Sharon together? They're like us only on steroids and older."

Sharon: "Listen, kid, I delivered you into the world. I can just as easily take you out."

Half-truth. Sharon was in the delivery room when Darcy was born. Had the doctor not shown, she could have--and would have--easily taken over and brought Darcy into the world. In her mind, she did.

Sharon was born to do everything.

We showed those youngsters how to have a good time. The weather was cold, but we had a blast. We drank margaritas and sangria. We made a few drunk phone calls to former colleagues and reminisced about the good old days. We reflected on our youth and those friends in our past. We agreed we did better damn well for ourselves in the long run.

And we've decided that 2022 is the year of Cara and Sharon get-togethers.