Who Let The Friends Out

I have wonderful friends.
Today, in the morning, when a certain amount of stressful life stuff was crashing down, the phone rang. On the other end was the Alligator, calling from Seattle to tell me some tales of his night out with the Rat City Roller Girls, sipping Fighting Cock on a homeless man’s blanket, and doing the haka. As we traded news and even some advice, he asked if I’d received his package. What package? Well, I clearly hadn’t received it then, and the conversation moved on. But as we talked I wandered to the front window and spied a large cardboard envelope in the letterbox… could it be? Yes! So he got to listen to me tear open the package he’d sealed up not so very long ago.
There were three photo prints inside – one spectacular shot of Aoraki/Mt Cook, one shot of the two of us gurning for the camera, and the piece de resistance, a large b+w print of the Alligator in full Jewish cowboy getup. The image showed off his hat to excellent effect, and the hat is pretty much the whole costume. This hat is so good it has a scorpion on it. The scorpion hat was bequeathed to me, and has settled in New Zealand. I am privileged.
Anyway, it was really good to hear him talk. I’m terrible at picking up the phone and calling people, but thankfully some others are not so slack. There’s something almost magical about the connection of hearing someone’s voice.
All of which led to just now, when I finally got a moment to put into my laptop a CD also enclosed in the envelope. I played the MP3 entitled “Morgan listen to this first”, and there was that same voice, wishing me well and then reading me a poem. The poem chosen sent me into hysterics. Awesome.
And then within the “And then you can open this” folder, much bounty, including photos from his recent stay in NZ and also from his visit a few years back to see me and Cal in Edinburgh, most of which I’d never seen before. Also some neat-looking music that I haven’t started to listen to yet.
My only regret – never quite managing to get together a crew for the king of the D-sports, Dodgeball. But I have not forgotten that noble goal. It shall be done, sooner or later. Wellingtonians – count yourself warned.
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There are other wonderful friends out there. This isn’t even the only nice thing I’ve received by post from overseas in the last couple weeks. This one compelled me to post, though, because I was so blown away by the poem reading on that MP3. And then I decided not to tell any of you what the poem was. Sorry. You’ll just have to beg me to play it for you when you’re near my laptop, I guess.
I hope you’re all reflecting on this post not with envy for the awesomeness of my friend the Alligator, but with empathy as you think of the great friends in your life. I’m all about sharing the love here. In fact, I’m so into sharing the love, I’m going to follow in hottieperm‘s footsteps and throw in a selfie:

Scorpion-enabled of course…