Today, I’m wishing I was a little more of a pack rat.

Because if I actually saved things instead of throwing them away,  I could prove to you that my best friend Colleen and I have actually been planning to be “gay married” for more than a decade.

Of course, we don’t call it that. We just call it two best friends growing old together. She sends me greeting cards every year proving it. You’ve seen them — with the little old ladies hanging out on the porch at the nursing homes, laughing and joking about the cute pool boys and our future sagging boobs (OK, her future sagging boobs) and whatever it is little old ladies talk about when they’ve lived the better part of their lives together in some fashion.

This scenario is, of course, based on the thought that we’ve outlived any men in our lives (sorry boys, but it is a scientific probability that we will do just that) and that as our lives reach a slowing-down point, we will be content with good company, good memories, and the knowledge that there is someone there to hold your hand when times get tough.

But according to what the lovely state of North Carolina decided yesterday, there’s a glitch in our little-old-ladies-on-the-porch plan. Meaning, if I have to go to the hospital (and I will, duh, I’m old), she couldn’t make any necessary medical or financial decisions should I be unable to.

This is the girl who washed gravel out of my forehead when I let a drunk guy give me a piggy back ride up a hill when I was 20. The girl who held my hand when she got her ear pierced and I felt faint (yes, that happened.) The girl who knows the look on my face when I am going to be sick. She has rubbed my hair countless times and she would be a perfect “life
partner” should we outlive all the men.

And I think it’s pretty damn unfair that we don’t legally have that choice.