"That was a Good Friday"

It was ninth grade, which was . . . 1983.

We must have gotten off school for Good Friday.  I don't remember it, I didn't, in fact, remember the date at all for years, just the circumstances.

I had gone with my church youth group to a big one day youth convention in Little Rock.  My memory tells me it was in some type of convention hall, the kind that I'm so familiar with today and strike me as variations on the same theme.

Another church in town had also taken their youth group, and two of the guys were new, or soon to be, friends of mine.  One was in the high school fraternity to which I was pledging, the other his younger brother.  Both handsome.  One shorter than the other, but both cut from the same handsome brown haired, athletic cloth.  One had the reputation of being a bit wild, and it was probably well earned.  And both as nice as they could be.

Somehow, out of the crowd, they spotted me.  Came to my youth group and took me, one by each hand, and dragged me over to their church group and sat me down.

Beside her.

For the next 10 years she would be my close friend and constant companion. Weekends would go without discussion as being reserved for the other, at least one night per weekend.

She took me to her Senior prom at her private school. Any trips in subsequent years, for graduations and football games, have me walking through a sort of mist in my mind of magical prom nights with her. I catch myself looking to find a glimpse of us on the dance floor or coming through the gym doors in our dress up clothes.

On Good Friday, I sent her a text for our anniversary.  She replied simply, "That was a Good Friday."