Welcome, Mat. Happy you're in a *secured building.* :-)

We were young. Silly. Stupid. Obnoxious even.

I was 19 and she was 17 when we met; she turned 18 a month later and I turned 20 a month after that. We happened to meet on accident/coincidence/divine intervention that summer. From two different worlds we came: I was a college student who grew up three hours away. She was from Stevens Point, a new graduate from high school. We answered the same ad in a newspaper (back then, in 1991, it was newspapers, not Craigslist, kids) to share a broke-down house for the summer for $250. Not a month; the entire summer. It was 1991, afterall.

We were underaged but we still drank (gasp!) -- I know, right? Harlots! And we'd walk from our brokedown palace on Union Street in Stevens Point out to the Square with $2 in our pockets, knowing we could get boys to buy us drinks. And after, with sweet little kisses on their cheeks (not so much harlots afterall!), we'd stumble home through the back of the Shopko parking lot since we were always too smart to drive drunk. And, well, we didn't have cars.

On the way, we somehow fixated on folks' welcome mats. Don't know why, don't know how. But it was a college town and we knew the difference between the locals and the college students who got the crappy ones for free. So our game (to keep us awake? sober? vertical until we got home and crawled through the window?*) was to "take" someone's welcome mat...and then switch it with someone else's. We never really stole one in that sense (er... Bartles & James sense anyway. Remember: it was 1991!)... everyone who had one at their door the night before still woke up with one again. Just maybe a different one.

And so when she gifted me with this one this Christmas? Oh, hells yes, it's incredibly awesome. It's a little fox saying hello. But it's also a throwback to the summer we met: two girls on paper who had nothing in common and had no reason to ever meet. Except by accident. Or coincidence. Or, as I really believe, divine intervention. :-)

Love you, my Sue!

*story for another day *grin*