Are we in Kansas?

I got to spend yesterday afternoon with six of the women who endured nurses training with me in the misty past.  We spent three straight years together in a program that isn't used anymore, as far as I know.  It was called the diploma program, and we had our science courses at the nearby university, only a couple blocks away.  In the early mornings, we got practical nursing experience on the wards, taking vital signs, this was before electronic helpers), passing trays, giving baths, and generally serving as slave labor as we learned to relate to sick folks.

It was a pretty good way to learn how to be a nurse, though at first I figured I'd be making beds the rest of my life.  But when I started this education, I was seventeen years old.  Before long we were giving baths to terminal cancer patients, and taking care of people with multiple injuries after car accidents.  At eighteen, I didn't have much to say to the kids over at the college who graduated from high school with me.

Our other viscissitudes, included the imminent danger of flunking out.  Within six months, our class was half the size it had been in August when we began.  Under these conditions we became close friends.  Add to this the fact that we were shipped to Detroit and Kalamazoo for "affiliations" where we got experience in disciplines in larger hospitals.  Psychiatry, obstetrics, and communicable diseases.  We went on these jaunts for three and four months at a time with two or three other classmates. 
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The two other women who went through all of training with me were present yesterday.  It is like a reunion with your closest cousins.  We all keep in touch, though we are living all over the nation, with a round robin letter that comes around every four or five months.  Then we read everyone's news and write a new letter to send along to update everyone.

Make new friends, keep the old,
One is silver, the other is gold.

The Golden Oldies.  They are truly a treasure.

BTW--I wrote the title for this when I was going to tell you about the windstorm.  Maybe tomorrow....