To Jannie

Yesterday I woke up grouchy and stayed grouchy all day. My sweet Aunt Faith would say I got up on the wrong side of bed, and maybe I did (although not literally).

This morning, however, I woke in a good mood, remembering my pretty, vivacious high school girl friend, Janice Stone. 

Jannie, petite and blonde and stacked like a woman, loved to flirt, so boys swarmed around her like bees to clover. Her mother bought her pretty clothes that showed off her C cups, unlike my mother who draped me in sweaters two sizes too big to camouflage my peanuts.

Jannie's folks had a farm just over the Nebraska-Kansas state line. I loved to visit her there. A player piano stood in the living room, and we two would wind it up and sing, howling like wolves.

Time took its course. 

When I last saw Jannie, we walked along the Alma, Nebraska, highway, chatting. She planned to move to California, and we knew we'd probably not see each other again.

We were in our young thirties; she hated aging. Youth, she knew, was part of her charm. I was a year older than Jannie, and she never let me forget that. 

As we chatted, she turned to me, her blue eyes sparkling. She knew I planned to be a famous writer, like Willa Cather, or, at worst, Beth Streeter Aldrich, so she quipped, "Now Marilyn, when those reporters interview you, don't tell them your age because then everybody will know how old I am."

And sweet Jannie, I want you to know that for your sake, I never told a reporter the truth about my age. With you in mind, I always swore I was much older than I was. The last time a reporter asked, I insisted I was in my nineties.