I don't know how to be a crazy ex-girlfriend.

A while ago on good ol' Facebook, I did that thing where you post a status asking people to comment on how they met you.  Most of mine were pretty average -- school, church, etc.  There weren't very many interesting stories to tell, and I was starting to feel a little more vanilla than usual.

Then one friend in particular posted, and I smiled to myself.  Because our friendship... Well, it was one that was never meant to be.

It was 1995.  I was a year out of high school and living large.  Part-time college.  Part-time job.  Full-time living with my Granny.  My social life revolved around what was going on with the College and Career group at church.  I was having fun, but I craved more... Something new... Something daring...  Something like...

The Florida Baptist All-State Youth Choir Tour.

You're shocked, I know.

I had been the year before, but it was pretty traumatic.  My boyfriend, who I was with for almost my entire senior year, had broken up with me, and he was the reason I was going.  I comforted myself by hanging making out with a tenor in the ensemble.  The whole trip was all kinds of awkward.

So the next year, he was going to be there again -- but this year was going to be different.  I was no longer a high school girl!  I was in college, and I had a real job!  (Working in an office trumped working behind a cash register in my mind.) 

Well, and he and I were kind of friends by then.  He lived about three hours away from me, but we kept in touch.  I called him when Granny went in the hospital once, and he was really cool and sweet and talked to me and made me feel better.

But.  He did have a new girlfriend.  (I'll call her Leslie.  Because that's her name.)  Leslie wasn't really new, he'd started dating after we broke up.  Not, like, right after.  There was a mourning period, I'm sure.  Anyway, he was going to be there, he had a girlfriend -- and she was going to be there. 

I was going on the tour this year as The Ex-Girlfriend.

I'd met Leslie once before when I'd gone to visit him -- we may have even gone on a double date with her and another guy, actually.  She was nice, she was pretty.  As The Ex-Girlfriend, I didn't know what I was supposed to do with her, though.  Narrow my eyes at her?  Snub her completely?  Or was I just supposed to stand around nervously while she did those things to me?

That's a lot of pressure for a choir tour!

At that time, the participants of the tour stayed on a college campus for the first couple of days for rehearsals.  I remember standing in a line the first day, maybe to go to a meal, and Leslie was right behind me with her friend.  I heard her friend asking about The Ex-Girlfriend, and Leslie must have gestured to me because there was an uncomfortable pause, and then my Super Keen Ex-Girlfriend Peripheral Vision caught sight of a knowing nod coming from the friend.

I readied myself for a week full of hateful glances and boastful PDA.

However, I began to notice that the couple was spending an awful lot of time apart.

I can't tell you who broke enemy lines first, but Leslie and I started talking somehow.  I learned that she and our mutual acquaintance were "on a break."  (This was well before Ross and Rachel took theirs.)    I'm sure I could've secretly relished the fact that they were on the outs, but I didn't.  Against all odds, Leslie and I became buds.  She and I and our roommates along with two other singers kept close on the tour and spent every waking, non-singing moment together. 

I even helped Leslie fend off a young woman who was a not-so-secret admirer of her man.  I think that might've qualified me for Ex-Girlfriend of the Year.

After the trip, Leslie and our mutual acquaintance rekindled their romance. 

You'd think that she and I would've simply parted ways.  Said to each other, "We'll always have choir tour," and moved on.

But Leslie and I kept in touch!  We wrote letters back and forth -- real letters, handwritten, on paper, sent in envelopes with stamps and everything!  She went to college and we got all high tech with the e-mail.  Then the relationship between Leslie and our mutual acquaintance dissolved, but after a while I got to hear about a new man in her life, and then I was an attendant in their wedding. 

I think their wedding was the third time I'd actually seen her in person since we met, too...

15 years have passed since I was The Ex-Girlfriend and Leslie was The Girlfriend, and from our unconventional beginnings sprang a friendship that has passed the tests of time, distance, 3 marriages, and 5 kids.  I think it defies the laws of nature.

And.  We're both Facebook friends with our mutual ex-boyfriend.  And his wife.

It's all good.