#454 To Russia With Love

The latter part of last year, my good friend, and twin tower, Tammy travelled to Russia.  She didn’t go on vacation.  She went to work there for the next two years. 

I first met Tammy in 1986 at a girls’ basketball camp at Purdue University.  The next time I saw her was the fall of 1992 at an Athlete’s in Action training camp in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Tammy was on the team and I was assigned to stay at her house before we left on our tour.  Well, it was her dad’s house, as we were in our early-20s.  We hadn’t kept in touch after the Purdue camp but quickly realized we had met before. 

Not long after our tour, Tammy moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and has lived there ever since.  (Minus a couple years in India.)  Over the years we have visited each other.  We also talk on the phone now and then.  She’s 6’3” and we commiserate on clothes, shoes and men.  I tell her I don’t see many tall, good-looking men in Indianapolis.  She tells me she sees lots of tall, good-looking men in Ft. Lauderdale.  Unfortunately, most of them are gay. 

We’ve had lots of fun times together.  She met my friends and me in New York in 1999 and 2000, and in St. Louis for the 2015 Men’s Final Four. We ran the 2000 New York City Marathon together (hence, the twin towers). 

We have conflicting stories of how this came about, but one of us was walking down the street and a stranger commented on our height, as they are likely to do.  Instead of the usual, “How tall are you?” or the exclamatory, “You’re tall!”, this person referred to us as a goddess.  Wow!  It made quite an impression that one of us told the other, and for several years we have refereed to each other as the “Florida goddess” and the “Indiana goddess”. 

Tammy and her friend, Martha, visited me before Tammy left for Russia, and it was great to catch up in person again.  With technology, I hope we will be able to keep in touch as if she were still in the States.  Russia has never been on my list of places to visit, but I would love to visit her while she is there.  Finding a cheap/free place to stay overseas is half the battle! 

Bon voyage, Tammy!  Удачи and Бог благословил!  (That is my attempt at Russian translation.)