Yesterday I went to visit my best female friend who unfortunately lives forty minutes north of me and does not drive. During non-peak hours it's a 20 minute drive. Any ways we were planned on going to the Portland Saturday market but I for some reason went to bed at 6:30PM Friday night and she was up dealing with an inebriated husband till 3AM in the morning. Beings I was up at mid-night and ended up texting with her the end result was no Saturday market as we both needed to take naps and ended up getting to her place around 11AM.

So we went to a great mall five minutes from her place and did typical shopping and trying on clothes. Got to Pandora store (the only one in Oregon) and wanted to find a charm for my bracelet that had butterflies which can be seen in the picture above costing $40. After picking that one out my friend asked the sales person if they had any charms with a knife on it (if you have read my blogs this is about me and teaching edge weapon tactics) but no they did not. Then she says, how about one for best friends. Now I know at this point what she is doing, looking to purchase a charm for my bracelet and keep quite as saying you don't need to do this will not stop her. 

So the third one I say something like, yes that one works for me and by looking at it my brain says "expensive". She says I want to buy this for her. 

Side note, when you tell the sales person you want a charm he or she (dealt with both) will place the charm on the bracelet.

He then takes both our credit cards to ring up the charms.

At this point my friend breaks down in tears and know why, she adores me and has said countless times I am truly her best friend. So we embrace each other for a while then release. I look at her and she at me and we embrace again all the while she has tears flowing down her face. Of course that got me teary eyed too.  I was of course not keeping time on this but was an intense few minutes and the sales person did not try to interrupt us. 

Even though a year ago I had been on hormones for eight months I was not that emotional, I had been a fearsome male who rarely if ever showed emotions and now over the past six months finding this happening more and more

Leaving the store she told me not to tell her husband she had purchased the charm as he would not care for her spending that kind of money on non-family members

We then went to lunch then back to her place where her husband was cooking dinner. Sat and chatted for about an hour then left for home.

If you read this far the thing I wanted to say if nothing else is, it is so wonderful to have good friends. I have many friends but only four that I can say that are really and truly a friend for life. Besides my friend mentioned above I have after thirty years rekindled friendship with my brother's former girlfriend whom he dated in our late teens. I stayed close with her for another five years until she moved 3,000 miles away. We reconnected the week after my gender reassignment surgery for an entire day. Two weeks ago I said I would be purchasing a new sports car in the fall and driving down her way to visit my son. She has invited me to stay for a weekend which will be so wonderful. There are few people that will do this and I am honored to be her friend.