"FRIENDS..." 'Bettejo Dux' (Classic Wednesday)

Bettejo Dux has lived on the cosmic Garden Island of Kaua'i for over 40 years...

Bettejo  is the author of the famed novella, "The Scam."

Her new book "Children of Extinction" will be out soon!

FRIENDS

I am unhappy about  generalizations. You know the kind: most blondes are  dumb. To be really happy one must have a lot of  friends.

I think  about friends. I’m not a people collector. I think it may be a writer’s trait. A  brilliant writer friend, who I see seldom, says the same thing. He goes a step further, feeling he must have been adopted because his mother was such a gregarious person. I’m gregarious.  Sometimes. Sometimes not. I attribute that trait to being an only child.and moving around a lot. I attended six schools before graduating from High School.

I had a friend-at least one-in every school but did not usually carry her around with me when I moved. As a little girl, I had mostly girl friends. Boy friends? I always went steady. Didn’t shop around.  Liked one guy at a time until we broke up. I did carry one boy friends around for over sixty years. That’s because we always kept bumping  into each other in curious corners of the world. He and my husband and I graduated from the same school in Marine County. Met in Manila.  Then became neighbors on Oahu. Got to know his darling family. After my husband died and he divorced his wife, we attended our 40th high school reunion together. The only couple who had gone together in high school. He was born August 16, 1929. I was born August 15, 1930.

I took him as guest speaker to a Rotary Meeting in Poipu when he visited me on our shared 75th birth dates. When he got a year older, I sent him back.

A very successful, handsome man- Annapolis grad, Naval attaché in New Delhi, CO of Treasure Island, a Bohemian-he was a  swell guy. We fought a lot. About wars, politics and stuff. His first wife was darling.

He and his first wife recently died. I miss them.

I was never friendly with relatives. Attribute this to my vagabond life. I left the country when I was 19 and toddled about on adventures in exotic ports-La Ceiba. Quito. Zamboanga, Appari, Guayaquil.  Became acquainted with  a beautiful cousin who lives on the mainland. She visited me here. I  wish we’d met earlier. She’s some  twenty years younger than I. Her father and my father were brothers.  She attended Stanford on scholarship.

When I came back to America-to Hawaii-I was thrust into a very strange  world. Suburbia USA. Then Kauai, a third world feudal state, in both of which venues I  did not belong.  I’ve been, in my life, the one everybody loved to love and the one everybody loved to hate.  Don’t know which role I loved the best.

At the moment I have one very  dear friend. He’s an editor, publisher, photographer, blogger, columnist and great guy. He loves dogs. He and his dog, Obama, have visited my jungle house. They understand my eccentricity and both, I think, are  inclined to be loners, too Know why I like him? Because he makes me feel ageless.

 Hana Hou, (Encore) Shared from Facebook...