Through the magic of Facebook, I recently got back in touch with the serious looking person in the orange Snoopy sweatshirt in this picture.  

The other person, I'm a little embarrassed to admit, is me.  The third creature is Leica, my lovely bay mare for the summer, and the photo was taken at horse camp in Maine.  Alice, in the sweatshirt, was my best friend when I was 13, back in 1969.  I hadn't seen her since about 1971 (and still haven't, we've just been in touch by e-mail).  It turns out she's a writer.  A very fine writer of literary fiction, in fact (her most recent book, out soon, is called Lost).

My other best friend from those days, Lorraine, whom I also re-met recently after having been out of touch for thirty years, shyly and apologetically showed me the first few chapters of the book she'd been writing, but put away "because it was probably much too awful."

It wasn't awful.  In fact it was astonishing, and she's now working on finishing it.

So how did my 13-14 year old self happen to choose brilliant writers as best friends?  Damned if I know.  But it does send a shiver down my spine.