Ten years ago this week I received an e-mail that ended up having a huge impact on my life. There are two very different memories of exactly how the e-mail was worded, and this is my version: “The scores on the spreadsheet are wrong; fix mine” or at least something pretty close to it.
Little did I know when I set up a friendly competition for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2000 that I’d make a very good friend from it. Renae was actually Julie’s friend, and Julie had invited her to be a part of our bracket competition. At that time I put everyone’s picks into a spreadsheet to tally and report the scores from. Somehow in copying formulas I apparently had not grabbed all the columns so Renae’s score was wrong following the first/second rounds. Who knew she was an Excel guru???
I’m guessing the e-mail message was somewhere between what I remember and the very flowery request that she remembers, but the result is that we ended up talking on the phone. We began e-mailing as well, and from that original e-mail a really good friendship developed.
That summer I moved to Ohio and Renae helped me get settled there doing a lot of projects when I got settled as well as on her annual visits. She began looking for jobs for me in Michigan and four years later I moved here. She has spent many hours working on projects at my house. We’ve golfed, traveled, gardened, raised chickens, watched many basketball games, and shared many other experiences. Oh yes, and there’s been a lot of laughter as well.
It takes a long time to grow an old friend.-- John Leonard
no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.-- Francois Mauriac
Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil.-- Baltasar Gracian
A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.-- Bernard Meltzer
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