Friends

A neighbor used to tell me that even if we can't choose our relatives, it is nice that we can choose our friends. Eleven of us, having been together on the Board of Directors of a Seniors Computer Group for many years, had met monthly to plan speakers and programs for the membership. As interest and need for this waned, we decided to stop the club meetings. However, we didn't want to break up the friendship developed over the years in our small group. We now meet monthly, just the Board members who had done all the work, shared fun together, gotten to know each other and who became a close, concerned bunch of friends with many disparate interests, as well as shared.

We are a rather motley group of seniors, 3 women and 8 men, who met yesterday to talk for two hours, followed by a lunch hosted by two members living in a lovely retirement community. We stayed on topic (computers) for a long time, interrupted as usual by jokes, personal anecdotes, and many topics understood only by other seniors. Two of us use Vista, one hates it; the other loves it. We discussed the advantages of MAC (Macintosh) over Microsoft (MS), though only two of us use a MAC while the rest of us are still stuck by the software investment in MS.

We shared software program information, traded information on resources, and not once was there a raised voice other than the decibel level needed for hearing at our age. There was no sibling rivalry, no Mother-liked-me-better-than-you comments, no embarrassing telling of incidents of childhood behaviors, and none of the uncomfortable things that happen in many family get-togethers.

We started as seniors and have really grown OLD together in the past 10 or so years. We all look forward to meeting. Whether we talk about computers, or not, seems less relevant than that our group keep touching one another's lives for those brief hours. It is hard to put into words to these dear friends just what their friendship means. A simple 'thank you for being you' will have to suffice.