The four of them sat at their usual table in the back corner of Auntie Mary’s Tea Shoppe. They had a pot of tea in a floral cosy in the center of the table, four porcelain cups in saucers, and a plain scone on each plate. No one was sipping, though, and only Eunice was breaking off bits of the scone.

“Damn, but I’m bored to tears.”

Eunice, Deborah and Bernice swung their heads around and stared at Caroline.

“Did you just say “damn”?” Eunice was stunned. “I’ve known you for over 40 years and never heard you use a cuss word, Caroline. What’s gotten into you?”

“What’s gotten into me? Nothing! And that’s the goddamn problem. I am bored spitless. We’ve been eating scones and sipping tea for years now, and what has that ever meant to us? I hate tea and I’m sick to death of scones. Don’t you just want to….I don’t know….do some DIFFERENT? Something wild and unexpected?”

“Well, gee, I wouldn’t even know what that is,” Deborah said with a sigh. “I’m so stuck in a rut I’m up to my ears in nothingness.”

Bernice nodded her head. “Me too. You know what I did yesterday? I got out the Swiffer and swept the floors and then realized I had done it the day before and the day before that, and…well….I Swiffer the stupid floors every day and nobody even walks on them escept me.”

All of them sat quietly, Eunice still crumbling up her scone. What was there to say? They were four supposedly genteel ladies of a rather advanced age and hadn’t broken out of their mold in decades. They’d buried husbands, divorced them, raised children and seen them move away, had at one time been young and silly and now they sat staring at tea cosies and scones.

“We have to fix this,” Caroline said. “Do you realize we all graduated from high school 60 years ago and we maybe have a few good years left and here we sit eating fucking scones. Without raisins!”

Eunice’s mouth dropped open and she leaned over to Deborah and whispered, “Did she just use the F-word?”

Deborah, in a state of shock, just nodded.

Bernice slammed her hand on the table and the cups rattled on the saucers while they all jumped. “So what do we DO? What can we goddamn do to feel alive again? Because I am ready and willing for anything but this!” And she waved her hand around the tea room.

Caroline grinned. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh dear,” Deborah said. “When you used to say that, we knew we were headed for trouble.”

“Yup. And trouble is what we need to get into. Come on, girls, this is an early death and we’re not dead yet. I think we need to do what we used to do back in high school.”

“You thinkin’ what I think your thinkin’?” Bernice grinned back.

“The lake!” Eunice couldn’t believe they had brought that up. How many years had it been?

Deborah, in her own quiet way, piped up. “I’ll bring the booze.” They all stared at her. “What? I think it’s all a great idea! If I spend one more day in my house staring at daytime TV I am going to go bonkers and be put in the mental health wing of my retirement center. Count me in!”

Soon they had a plan. The lake for the weekend with booze, cigarettes (which none of them had smoked in years and years) and Caroline had lowered her voice and quietly said, “I have week. My son brougt it from Colorado to help with the arthritis pain.”

At that there was an intake of air from the other three. And then they all laughed. The idea of four old ladies getting high together seemed ludicrous, but not one of them said they wanted out.

And that’s how the whole thing began. It ended a lot differently than any of them had expected after Deborah took it on herself to invite several of her male friends from the retirement center, and when somehow they all ended up skinny dipping at the lake and there was involvement from the sheriff who had known them for years.

But that’s a story for another day.