Wild Women

I am part of a group called the Wild Women. We are represented well by this photo of the Wild Women of Wongo, only we are from Ponca City, Oklahoma, so we would be "The Wild Women of Ponco" I guess.

We met each other as far back as elementary school and all went to the one high school in Ponca City and graduated in the same class. Back then we were not known as wild women because our wildness had not yet developed and ripened. But when we met again at the 20th high school reunion, we found ourselves dancing with crazed abandon, laughing hysterically at things no one else seemed to find funny and generally making a scene. It was just too much fun and so we decided to start meeting once a year.

This year will be our 20th annual Wild Women's gathering. We've met in L.A., San Diego, Beaver Lake (!), Tulsa, Dallas, Austin and many other places of renown. The first couple years we entertained ourselves publicly by pretending we were spokesmodels and privately by making outrageous phone calls to past high school boyfriends. "Guess who this is?" (Don't knock it 'til you've done it.)

As we've mellowed with the years (growing ever more beautiful and sexy) we've talked each other through divorces, cancer, marriages, affairs, death of parents, parents with Alzheimer's and strokes, and sometimes dangerous antics of our children. At our gatherings nowadays, we might have a martini or two, always have at least one divine meal somewhere, and talk almost non-stop about almost everything. I love these women. We were sex and the city before there was a Sex and the City.

Now I live in Switzerland which has proven a bridge too far for the Wild Women to manage. That makes me an ex-officio member I guess. I joined last year's gathering by Skype from Zurich at 2:00 a.m. but it wasn't the same.

The point of all this is that you just never know. For example, you don't know who you might run into at a boring-type of function who might become your lifelong wild woman friend. You don't know what will happen to you in this coming year and even if you will live through this year. Odds are you will, but you never know. You can't predict what someone might say to you tomorrow quite innocently, that will change your life forever.

We think life is ho-hum and predictable, but I would say that it most certainly is not. Predictable is the same as safe which is kind of the same as dead. Okay, maybe not the same as dead, but certainly no longer alive. Maybe more like a vampire. They are alive, but also dead. Gross.

How did I get onto vampires from talking about wild women? Maybe it's time to say good night. I think I've made my point and there's no reason to belabor it.