Granddaughter stared at her grandmother across the kitchen table.
“What did you call them?”
Grandma smiled and took a slow sip of tea.
“Back then, dear, we called them… friends.”
The granddaughter blinked.
“Friends?”
“Of course.”
Grandma nodded confidently.
“You know… a dancing friend, a poetry friend, a motorcycle friend, a guitar friend, and a rich friend who bought me dinner.”
The granddaughter nearly dropped her cookie.
“Grandma!”
“What?”
“Those aren’t friends!”
Grandma raised an eyebrow.
“They weren’t?”
“No!”
The granddaughter started counting on her fingers.
“You went dancing with one.”
Grandma nodded.
“You wrote love poems with another.”
Another nod.
“You rode motorcycles with one.”
“Wonderful motorcycles.”
“You listened to guitar songs from another.”
“He played beautifully.”
“And the rich one paid for fancy dinners.”
Grandma smiled warmly.
“He certainly did.”
The granddaughter threw her hands into the air.
“Grandma, that’s not friendship.”
Grandma looked genuinely confused.
“No?”
“That’s five boyfriends!”
Grandma burst out laughing.
The kind of laugh that made her shoulders shake.
Finally, she wiped a tear from her eye.
“Oh sweetheart.”
“What?”
“The difference is…”
She leaned closer.
Lowered her voice.
And whispered:
“None of them knew about each other.”
The granddaughter’s jaw dropped.
“GRANDMA!”
Grandma calmly took another sip of tea.
“What?”
“That’s even worse!”
Grandma shrugged.
“It was a very different time.”
The granddaughter couldn’t stop laughing.
“So what happened?”
Grandma smiled.
“Eventually?”
“Yes?”
“I married the motorcycle friend.”
The granddaughter blinked.
“Really?”
Grandma nodded.
“He was the only one who could afford neither poetry nor fancy dinners.”
“Then why him?”
Grandma smiled toward an old photograph hanging on the wall.
“Because he was the only one who stayed when my motorcycle broke down, my poems were terrible, and I couldn’t pay for dinner.”
The granddaughter softened.
“Aww.”
Grandma pointed a finger.
“Don’t get sentimental.”
“Why?”
“Because two years after we got married, he found out about the guitar friend.”
“GRANDMA!”
The laughter could be heard all the way from the kitchen to the front porch.
