Single-serving Friends

As many of you are aware last week we spent on what is being coined the Midwest Gabbie Tour 2010.  We took a multiple destination trip to see various friends and family, but most importantly to show off our little girl.  I know that Sarah plans to write about the trip in the near future and get some pictures up, so I won't get into those details -- but they are coming... Sarah are you reading this?  If so, don't leave people hanging now :-)

However, I did want to write a little something that Sarah and I discussed after-the-fact.  Some of you I'm sure have seen the movie Fight Club.  I was hoping to find a good clip of this segment on YouTube, but the only one I could find had horrible audio.  So I'm resorting to the quote:

"Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends."

Now for those who aren't familiar, let me explain.  In the movie, the narrator is sick of the normal every day hub bub of life and essentially creates his alter-ego/personality.  In one of his explanations of his struggles in life, he makes the above comment - as a profession he is essentially a traveling salesman.  The portion that really jumps out at me, and that Sarah and I talk about when we travel are our single-serving friends.  Most often we do find relatively friendly people on our flights.  But the woman that was sitting next to us on our return flight was probably the best single-serving friend I've ever had.  She instantly fell in love with Gabbie (but who doesn't), she was extremely friendly and enjoyed simple humor, as I got to know her better I found out that she had some various struggles in life and it was her faith that really brought her through, and then when she heard more of our life - especially the past year - she was just overjoyed with how much we've been blessed.  In fact, Sarah had even mentioned afterward, "we should have given her the link to our blog."  Well, we did see her again, but Sarah didn't want to approach her - she gets shy at times.  She was here for a choir competition and said that if she liked the area she and her husband would return sometime for a vacation.  Maybe we will see her then, but probably not.  In fact, she will never know what we said about her, and for how great of a person she was, we never even exchanged names.  But to the random choir lady from Pennsylvania, thank you for being the best single-serving friend I've ever encountered.