I am one, it was more or less tax deductible, or would be if I ever made a profit at this growing stuff business.  Besides, you can't really go to a seminar on growing things and not learn something, can you? 

No, but this one came close.  Very rudimentary, elementary, boring.  Ho hum.  But I had paid real money so I sat and listened and made up stories about the people presenting the lectures about how it is good to have good dirt.  I learned that it is  good to have a good sunny site in which to grow things like apple trees, that a place that has snow until July is probably not the best site in the world  to plant an apple tree, that keeping things watered after you plant them is a good idea. 

I drew triangles on my notebook and colored them in with my pen.  Ho hum. 

There was a bookstore and gift shop next to the lecture hall, excellent  placement as it turned out.  You could leave the lecture hall on the pretense of going to the ladies or getting a drinrk of water and trot across the ten feet of pavement and buy seed packets, a cook book with nothing but pumpking recipes and a hard to find Bill Bryson book on the English language and if you wanted there was a mass of quilts, cups and other stuff you don't need. 

I stuck with the stuff you do need; books mostly.

Lunch was at the Bullard Tavern in the old village and to get there you had  to walk by or visit or both the Old Meeting House, the Fitch House (obviously when the Fitches were prominent and had more money -- obviously only distant relatives of mine -- the gardens, the cattle, the general store, the harness shop, the blacksmith shop, the tanner.  Lunch was included in the seminar and it was plentiful, startchy, and good. 

One of the attractions that drew me to this seminar was that a childhood friend was going to be there, too.  We had planned a reunion, sharing a room.

Barbara Mae Russell was born 12 hours before I was, in the same hospital.  For 
the first 18 years of our lives we lived five houses apart.  She is, I suppose, my oldest friend in that we have "known" each other the longest.  She was a strange girl, was Barb.  Not the smartest cookie on the plate, not the prettiest, and by no means the nicest.  She could be a right royal pain as a child.

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

You can't go home again.

Somethings don't improve with age.

There is a reason old sayings get to be old sayings.

She has changed some:  her appearance.  Barb is still remarkably white, in all manner of speaking.  She whispers when she says the word Jewish as in "I have Jewish friends".  I can't immagine the situation arising where she would have to apply the word 'black'  to an aquaintance.

Her eyes are quite blue, which is good.  It helps you detect where they are in her face.  Her face, hair, lips all were very pale.  She looks like someone who has suffered chemotherapy for months and managed to keep some of her hair.  She has found some extra weight (I liked that),  suffered some humiliation and found some inner peace, had some questions she'd like answers to (I liked that).  She enjoys drinking wine (I liked that!),  has kept her disdain for the ordinary and her belief that she is somehow elevated above the rest of us (I never liked that even if I sometimes feel that way about myself).

We stayed at the village inn and were pleasantly surprised at what $35 can get you:  a huge huge huge room with a walk-in closet, a gigantic bathroom, and two queen sized beds, two wing back chairs, a table and two chairs and a desk and chair.  We used the two wing back chairs and settled down to chat.

We drank wine.  A whole bottle.  We began to giggle.  Barb had brought cheese and crackers and strawberries and crystal glasses to drink the wine from.  I brought some wine.  Her bottle was better stuff;  we drank that first. 

We finished her bottle,  opened mine.  Drank half.  Began to snigger.  Decided we should go and get some dinner before they closed the restaurants in town.  Began to laugh. 

Barb drove. She had a red 4x4; seemed appropriate. 

In Sturbridge it is impossible to turn left on Route 20.  You turn right, get in a left hand lane and turn left at a traffic light, do a loop, go back past the Inn....  It seemed awfully elaborate for a small town.

We went to a lovely place called the Whistling Swan.  Years ago when Art and I stayed in Sturbridge while attending the antique and flea market sales in nearby Brimfield, he took me to dinner at the Whistling Swan.  I remembered that the food was good and recommended it; Barb laughed because she had been in Sturbridge in January and had eaten there as well and wanted to return. 

So we did.  In high spirits. 

Too bad for the Whistling Swan that we had both enjoyed it so much our first times around; too bad we won't ever be able to return.   Ever in our lives.  Here's what happened:

We gave our name to the hostess and she directed us to the bar.  We each had a glass of wine and we laughed some more.  We were shown to our table by a very nice young man who laughed with us over something inconsequential and we looked over the menus that our waiter, a delightful and attentive young man, brought us. 

We ordered  appetizers:  an excellent clam dish and our meals (she salmon, I scallops) and another glass of wine each.  Somewhere between appetizer and meal the waiter got a bit less attentive and by desert time he had become much  more interested in other diners, especially one table occupied by much younger women and he became quite brusque with us so as to spend more time chatting with them. 

We were jealous.

I asked for coffee, no desert.  Barb asked for tea.  They didn't have tea, he said, and went sailing off for my coffee. 

When he returned he asked did we want desert.  I said "No!" He said  "Are you sure?"  I said yes.   But Barbra was in the mood and said to me "Not even creme brule?" and I said  "Couldn't eat it!"  She smiled at me, turned to order some for herself but the waiter had zipped away to his other ladies table.  I tried to get his attention so that she could have her brule, but he paid no attention to the finger wagging of an old woman. 

Barb said never mind and I drank my coffee and we waited for the bill, chatting about how he had lost his chance at a large tip (hehehehe).  He brought it, the leather bound booklet, and slid onto the table, didn't ask did I want more coffee and was gone in  a flash. 

We figured out how much we each owed with a by now smallish tip.  Of  course neither of us had the right configuration of dollars to add up to what we each owed and it didn't occur to either of us that we could make up any differences with each other come morning. 

We sat there and waited for the waiter to come so that he could make change for us, each, so that we could leave exactly, each, what we each owed.  Our halves.  We waited.  We waited.  We waited. 

Barbra Mae said that Rob (her beau)  would not wait this long, that he would have long ago gotten up and left without paying.  I said I thought Art would do the same thing.  We laughed and said maybe we should do just that.  And we laughed some more. 

Then I had to pee.

And this is where it really went askew.

I put on my blazer, picked up my bag and said, I'm going to the ladies.   Barbara promptyly  stood up and said well, don't leave me here alone.  I'll come along and then we'll find the cashier. 

There was no cashier. 

The ladies room was down the hallway next to the coat check and the back door that led to the parking lot.  I went to the bathroom.  When I came out, I wandered back to our table but there was nothing left on it.  No plates, no silver, crystal, table cloth,  none of the  other diners who had been seated near us, not even the younger women, where in attendance,  and no waiter. 

Did it occur to us, either of us, to have another waiter take our bill?

Well, no.

We began to giggle again, in ernest.  We became quite mirthful.  We did not consider one thing except making a clean get-a-way as we were certain our miffed beaux might have done should they have gone off to pee and returned to find their table naked.

With leather binder in hand, bill and cash tucked inside, we sauntered back through the restaurant, smiling broadly.  We paused once, just before we got to the exit door, but then, laughing heartily and shushing each other, we made our way rapidly toward the red 4x4.  Barb unlocked the car a good 20 yards before we reached the vehicle (modern technology aids and abets the criminal, it seems), we jumped in the car, sped away from the restaurant at a reasonable speed, laughing until we both needed to pee once more.

We laughed for about an hour, sobering  up from time to time to consider that we had done a bad thing and then laugh about the bad thing we did. Somewhere around 1am a car pulled up out front and Barb said "Cheez it, the cops!" but it was just another overnight guest.  When we finally shut up in the wee hours of the morning and said good night, I said "Good night, Thelma!" and that started Barb laughing again. 

In the morning when we ventured out for breakfast, we slouched a bit low as we drove past the Whistling Swan....and giggled a little.  After breakfast I said I needed to use the ladies and Barb said "I'll get the car, pick you up out back, Louise!" 

If there is a moral to the story it is thus: the waiter might not be quite so easily led astray by younger, firmer female bodies the next time two middle aged ladies dine at one of his tables. 

And the next time two middle aged ladies go out to dinner they might try going out before they've finshed quite so much wine.

And that if you want to have a good time hooking up with old high school pals you weren't really pals with in the first place, you might think twice before going. 

Or bring along bail money.