I find as I get older, I’m often reflecting on my life and all the people that had a big influence on me or played a major role in my life. Two of those people are my very close friends, Barb and Kim. We all met when all three of us had just left home and heading off to our first full-time jobs. All three of us were starting work at Stratford General Hospital, Barb as a physiotherapist, Kim as an Assistant Librarian in Medical Records and me as a Medical Transcriptionist in Medical Records. Thankfully, for us in those days, when we were hired at the hospital, you also had the option of renting a room in the old Nurses Residence which was no longer used for nurses and you were able to rent one of the rooms which I think was $40 a month!! That was very reasonable rent but you have to remember that for me, I was making $1.60 an hour!! That worked out to about $250 a month and I had a car to pay for as well. One of my major purchases before leaving home was buying my green Duster for $3000!! It took me greater than 3 years to pay that off. I remember the day I moved in, mom and dad coming with me to settle me in the residence and I’m feeling pretty nervous about living on my own for the first time and starting a brand new job in another city and I was only 19 years old. I remember going to the shared kitchen area and there were other people there, two of which were Barb and Kim. The three of us hit it off tremendously and from that day forward we were life-long best friends. After a few months of living in residence, the three of us decided to move in together and we rented a three bedroom apartment on Kappelle Circle in Stratford. We had such a great time together for a year or so before we started to move on to other life events but those few years of being together will forever be etched in my memory as one of the most important times of my life.
Over the years, we all got married, we all had children but we never lost touch. We made a pact that we would get together at least once a year to spend a weekend together with all of us sharing in the hosting duties at our respective homes. This year was Barb’s turn and she reminded us that it had been 40 years that we had met and I just couldn’t believe it had been that long. I still to this day feel the most comfortable around Barb and Kim, when we get together, it is just like going back in time to the “good ole days” and we love to reminisce. We celebrated this year with treating ourselves to a spa treatment, going out to dinner and later in the evening getting Barb’s photo albums out and reliving some of our great memories.
For lunch, Barb took Kim and I to a very unique “retro” place to eat called the Bag Lady and it was a wonderful place to eat. Here is Barb and Kim…..
I cherish my friendship with Kim and Barb, they had a huge influence on my life; and I know that we are so fortunate to have met and had such a great friendship. I love them both immensely! Here is a picture that we took this weekend and the following pictures are ones that I scanned from my old photo albums.
The pictures above were when we first moved into our new apartment on Kappelle Circle and look at our lovely dining room table – a CARD TABLE! We had many good meals on that table! In the bottom pictures, you will see Henry (who ended up marrying Kim) who painted a wall mural on our living room wall, going all the way down the hallway to our bedrooms. It was awesome!
So this is a tribute to my true best friends, besties, BFFs or whatever other word is used now for friends for a lifetime! Thanks for the great memories and many more to still come!
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