Deanna S
Megan Benish was a close friend back in middle and high school and I learned of her passing today. We've been out of touch for years but the news was still a bit of a shock.
I don't even recall in what class or what circumstances landed us as friends back in middle school. Through the years we found ways to obliterate small town boredom together. She was among the first in our friend circle to get her own car and was always down to chauffeur. I recall an overly trinketed car-key lanyard she'd whip around. Megan was happy to plan and partake in many later recounted or regretted schemes... sometimes involving filling a car trunk full of cattails or corn as a prank to dump on an unsuspecting individual's driveway. Always for just for the sake of laughing til it hurt.
We'd cruise around Chautauqua county for hours with our 99-cent-a-gallon gasoline in our parents cars' , with the windows rolled down (no one had AC), cranking our burned CDs linked from one of those aux-cassette tape adapters to a discman.. maybe one cell phone within the group. We celebrated each others wins.. getting our part time jobs, honor & merit roll, or eventually.. scoring the elusive underage alcohol.
The news today brought up a variety of feelings, a large part regret. Regret for allowing to let time pass and not reaching out just to say hi, or even just to share a dumb meme, even when it's hard to figure out what to say. So, Hi.
-Deanna