Lynn Diamond:  

Well, I finally found my dear sweet friend, Lynn Marie Diamond, after almost 20 years of intermittent online searches. The quest was full of serendipity; but the most wonderful thing about it is that the events brought forth the vivid memory of exactly how Lynn would have reacted to the punchline …or was it an actual reunion I had with Lynn herself a year ago May? I had forgotten my friend’s trademark animated response to all things amazing, coincidental, absurd or ridiculous: To, first, acknowledge these things with a simultaneous gasp, jut forward of the head and wide open mouth and bugged-out eyes, she would capture mine for a frozen second. Then, a deep laugh would come forth from her still wide-open mouth until her face normalized into those sweet little chipmunk cheeks while we laughed together at the absurdity or marvel of the moment. How could I have forgotten? Oh, how many times we laughed together over things that only best teenage girlfriends could find so equally hilarious. To be honest, I think the depth of my own glee at these moments sprang largely from the sense of flattery and joy that they were my eyes she sought to capture to share such fun! Lynn had moved to Portage MI from Birmingham MI (suburb of Detroit) where her father had been an engineer with General Motors. When he was transferred to the Kalamazoo plant she, her parents and her sister Nancy moved in three houses down the street from me. As we got to know each other, she introduced me to Little Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and the Motown Review. She loved music, and was always the first to get excited about a new song before I did. We liked to live a bit on the wild side for 15-year-old suburban girls. Lynn would often bring up the time we got my father to drop us off near a teenage nightclub that both our parents had forbidden us to go to, and got her father to pick us up later, each never the wiser. Sometimes on a Friday night, Lynn would drink too much (any was too much!) or eat too little; ending the evening with her friends having to quickly try to figure out whether she needed orange juice or insulin to avoid a medical emergency. We would run her home where we were greeted in the driveway by her mother, Evelyn, who calmly and non-judgmentally stepped in and took her off our hands. Lynn’s mother was like that… always pleasant and quiet in the background appearing appropriately “square,” giving Lynn all the room she needed to be a “normal teenager” …yet always ready with her safety net to re-stabilize Lynn the minute she got in over her head. On Saturday afternoons, Lynn and I would sometimes visit a slight and very soft-spoken “black guy” about 6 years our senior named Charles Lipsey, who lived downtown in his own apartment. I don’t remember how we happened across him, but on Saturdays he would welcome us into his living room and patiently and meticulously teach us how to properly Boogaloo and do the other black dances of the time. (Lynn, I’m so sorry to tell you that they found Charles floating in the Kalamazoo River several years later, apparently having taken his own life.) Our second winter together, Lynn’s parents invited me to go to Florida with them for two weeks! My family could never afford such trips, so I was elated! We stayed in Clearwater Beach; and I got the worst sunburn ever! In the second half of our junior year, Mr. Diamond (whose middle name, Lynn took particular delight in telling me with innocent ridicule and hearty laugh, was Frances) was transferred to the Youngstown GM plant, and Lynn got to move in with me while we finished out the school year. I wished she could stay forever. I only went to Canfield to visit Lynn once. It was during our senior year after I bought my first car. We went shopping for records and came home with an album we had never heard of before, based solely on the cover, which depicted young demonstrators standing on a political platform with banners that read “ Lenin” on the left and “Marx” on the right …but the pictures under the banners were of John Lennon and Groucho Marx. The album title? “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All?” Perplexed and amused; we hurried back to her house to solve the mystery. As comedian Tom Papa might say, “Have you ever put on a new album expecting to hear music and, instead, you hear someone talking to themselves in a car? And then, when they encounter another person and tell them they’re in need of gas, the response is, ‘Well, if it’s gasoline you want, then roll up our...Expand for more