Pigs Fly

Out in the country, I mean, south of Lubbock TX, my parents bought a piece of land, 5 acres to be exact, when I was 7 years old. We moved out of our house in Lubbock and into a mobile home right before I started 3rd grade. Each day someone took me to school and I rode the bus home and walked half a mile down our caliche road home. There are many stories I could tell, but this one is the most pertinent today.

Living out in the country, riding a bus for over an hour everyday, going to the same school with the same people for nine years, tends to be similar to living in a small town. Everybody knows everything about everyone else and they are like elephants, they never forget anything.... every little thing you ever did, or didn't do, is saved and presented back to you at any time they feel it is necessary to remind you. Most of the time, it was given back to me in the form of an embarrassment.
Needless to say, I didn't date anyone I ever went to school with. I chose to drive into town and meet boys that went to one of the highschools there. But I digress...

There were a few boys who were nice to me and that I called "friend". One of them was just as cute as he could be and he rode my bus. Many an afternoon, I rumbled along, bouncing to the bumps of country roads looking out the window and stealing looks of this gorgeous young man who was in my class. My school girl crush lasted for years and I was never brave enough or felt I was good enough to give him any inkling of how I felt.
After all, the last one I had done that with had told me in no uncertain terms he was happy to be my friend but nothing more, so I wasn't ready to be shot down again, and a few years later, as a Junior in high school,  I was seeing college boys anyway.
My mom and dad divorced. My mom moved us a hundred miles north to her hometown and I started my senior year at another school... full of boys, who were ready to meet some new girls... it was heaven...

Thirty years later, Facebook comes along and all those people I went to school with came with the addition of one friend I really wanted to stay in touch with. When I saw the boy from the bus was on FB, out of curiousity, I wanted to see what he looks like now... and what was he doing and how did things turn out for him? He was so cute in school with this killer hair that everyone wished they had or could run their fingers through...
So... I added him as a friend, he didn't have a pictures, just a cartoon.
Then I moved to Lubbock to be closer to mom as she battled cancer. When winter approached I wrote about how it should be illegal to build a house there without a fireplace because I was wishing I had one. He commented that he had two and never lit them...
A few months later he commented on how I travel to the beach quite a bit.
In January, he commented on a concert coming up in Houston and I said I would love to see Jimmy Buffet.
Last week he sent me a message.
He is going to be in Houston for Jimmy Buffet, his friend who was suppose to go isn't going, would I like to go?
I didn't hesitate, I said I would gladly go. A few messages and a text this morning and a road trip plan in place and I am headed to Houston this week.
If asked if I thought I would attend a concert with the boy from the bus, I would have said it was very doubtful. However I just got off the phone with him, and he was as nice as ever and we worked out a tentative plan...

Sometimes good things you want to come to you... but not when you want them or try to make them happen, but out of the clear blue sky... and years later.
Regardless of the boy from the bus, I will enjoy the concert and the adventure of an evening unexpected but pleasantly surprising.
Never pass up a once in a lifetime opportunity unless it will completely screw up something you want to keep in place. I don't have to worry about it this time, it worked out fine, but I have made "safer" decisions before and wish I had gone for the adventure instead.