A Rainy Night
	Dear Paula, I have a list of funny and interesting short stories that my niece Janice gets a kick out of. Every once in a while I write one and send it to her and to you and a couple of other friends. Most of these stories include Sharon. How could they not. We were virtually inseparable for twenty-five year and what predicaments we would get into. That's why in my dream when we were all sitting around a table and Sharon looked as if she had been caught in the rain, with her hair, mascara and dress all wet and the rest of us were dry it was concerning to me. But she seemed in very good spirits. But it still bothered me and that's why I didn't mention it to you at first. Then it dawned on me a couple of days later that the next story I was going to write was the one where Sharon was in the hospital (Tampa General on Davis Island). I'm pretty sure you know this story. I can't remember why she was there. I went one night to see her. She told me that she really did NOT like the food. She said "I feel like if I don't get a Bar-B-Que beef sandwich and cole slaw and special tapioca pudding from Rentz's Diner (on Hillsborough Ave. near Ellicott St.) I'm going to die! Lynn, you've got to take me there." After some debating which of course I lost because I'd do anything she wanted, away we went to Rentz's Diner. She slipped this little hippy dress on that was rolled up in that big pocket book and we scurried down the hallways an snuck out some door. The food was exactly what she wanted and was SO GOOOD! After about an hour I said "I've GOT to get you back to the hospital! On the way back it started raining and as I pulled up to the hospital I offered to go in with her but she said "No, there's no need for both of us to get wet or maybe in trouble." So I let her out and watched her ran back in through the light rain into what I seem to remember as a side or back door in her true Sharon Carroll form. When I talked to her on the phone she said the nurses were saying "Where have you been?! We've been looking everywhere for you!" They had called her house and her mother's house trying to locate her. She said that even though it was obvious she had been gone for a while outside in the rain, she just sat there as they were feeling her wet hair and dress and looked at them innocently through runny mascara and said " Don't be ridiculous. I've been right here the whole time." And once I realized this, the dream made sense and I was so relieved. She was even wearing the same, or same type, little hippy throw on dress, I think. Lynn