Colonial Beach is a unique little river town. Moving here in January is not necessarily the best time for friend-making....everything sort of takes a sabbatical after the holidays...and most places are shut down until the summer season. So I've been looking "outside the box" for ways to meet some people, get involved, and maybe, just maybe, make a friend.
February 1st, the day after my 30th birthday...I headed over to a local museum where they were holding a training for potential volunteers. What should have been a talk in hospitality and procedures, actually was an hour long lecture on the history of the Navy in America complete with wordy power point slides. After the hour was up, one of the other attendees asked, "Now what is it you will be wanting the volunteers to do?" Moral of the story....they don't quite know yet, but I did learn the handy little fact that the term "de-bugging" came from the Dahlgren Navy Base here on the Northern Neck. Because a real bug had to be pulled out of one of those room size computation machines. The bug is taped in the logbook, housed at the Smithsonian in DC...true story.
Out of the ten-twelve people there, most were well past retirement, which only served to make myself and one other gal stand out. We walked out together afterwards and laughed about our expectations as to what the "training" would/should/could have been. I shared that I had just recently moved to the area and loved history, while she said she had heard about the training because she worked on the base and wanted to see what it was like. There was a moment where we almost parted ways....probably to never meet again, when I, in typical Amy fashion blurted out, "Since I just moved here, and I don't have any friends, do you want to be my friend?" AND if that wasn't enough I continued on to say, "We are having my birthday dinner at the house tonight, do you want to come?"
I don't necessarily recommend this as the best way to gain new friendships....but luckily for me, this time, it worked. She came to dinner! And got along fabulously among the friends and family we had over. And since then I've been going to Trivia night with her friends which happens at a local pizzeria the next town over...FTW! Although, I'm definitely NOT helpful when it comes to trivia...oh well.
I hope that Rebecca and I are friends for a very long time so we can always look back and laugh at the first day of friendship. The one where she went to a birthday party of a complete stranger and brought a card that said, "Wishing all your dreams come true" because once she ruled out all the "I value our friendship so much" cards there wasn't much left. Yay for new friends!