Friends (not the TV show)

Yesterday I had breakfast with two really, really good friends from nursing school. The three of us worked on group projects (whenever we were allowed to form our own groups), held study/cram sessions together, shared notes and audio tapes, and talked each other down from the ledge when things just got to be too much. Fortunately we did not all three melt down at the same time. I always knew they had my back, and it was such a liberating feeling (even for such a control freak as I). We swore on graduation day that we would keep in touch, and for over two years we have. I know the day is coming when JW will move to Seattle and BP will move back to Chicago, and our face-to-face time will be severely curtailed. I am confident, however, that with all the communication options available to us we WILL remain in touch and involved with each other.

Both women are considerably younger than I--as in, young enough to be my daughters. But they never made me feel old or different; they simply took me in and loved me (warts and all).

JW approached me in my very first nursing class and asked if I would be her partner. We were required to establish "partnerships" in several of our classes, and those partnerships were to last the entire semester (unless you had a psycho partner and could prove it). Now this does not sound like a big thing to you unless you know what happened in one of my prerequisite courses. I was in an anatomy and physiology lab course, and the professor instructed us to form partnerships of two. Well, I guess his area of interest was NOT math because there were 23 of us in the class. Guess who was "odd man out?" I didn't know anyone, and whenever I approached one of the already-estabished partnerships, everyone looked away as if looking me in the eye would commit them to some long-term relationship. Anyway, after about a lifetime of this (probably five minutes), the prof instructed one of the partnerships to take me in. This particular partnership was composed of a very strikingly beautiful young woman of about 19 and a young man about the same age who obviously wanted to get to know the young woman much better and who obviously was the victim of poor upbringing. He actually said, within my hearing, that he did not want to be in a group with the "old lady." He thought I might bring down his grade or that of the partnership. I stood there with my face burning, knowing that I HAD to have this course before I could enter nursing school. I could not walk out or drop the class. The prof finally assigned me to another partnership. Both of these "partners" droppped out of class within a couple of weeks, and I completed the semester as a partnership of one. Now you see why it was such a big deal to me for JW to voluntarily ask me to be her course partner?

BP is a delightful, I'm-not-gonna-take-any-s***, kind of person. She finds the funny in everything. She has absolutely NO FEAR about saying what she thinks; she just says it. Needless to say, BP was not raised in the Deep South as I was. I think she is the most psychologically fearless person I know (the most physically fearless person I know is my younger sister). She discovered her spouse was cheating on her the day of our pathophysiology final exam, and still managed to pass the exam! She divorced him, refinanced her house, made some severe budgeting decisions that summer and returned to school in the fall with never a whimper or whisper of self pity. BP, you're my hero.

Both of these women served as my lifeline throughout nursing school. We took turns keeping each other afloat in the tossing, churning, treacherous sea that is nursing school. They were both great study partners and always did their share. Words fail me when I try to convey how important they were in school and remain today. I KNOW I can email, text, or phone either of them if I need anything, and they will be there.

Remember the young man from my A&P course? He flunked out before mid-term! :-)