A friend

I cannot tell you how many hours I spent watching “The Golden Girls" while growing up. I can't tell you because I'm not sure I can count that high. There was a period years ago where that – and “The Wizard of Oz” – was all all my little sister would watch. She watched them 24-hours a day, 7-days a week. I'm sure had she been able to somehow bend the space-time continuum, she'd have happily watched them even more.

So, like it or not, I watched along. And most of the time I liked it. I really, really liked it. Never mind that the women were generations older than me. They were saucy and smart, brash and beyond taking any bullshit. Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia were like everyone's dream grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. They were the queens of snark before everyone was snarky. And the smallest but the snarkiest was always Sophia.

Later, in college and as an adult, I came to appreciate the Girls on a whole other level. Who among us has not had that conversation with their gay boyfriends about who was which “Girl?” No big surprise, I was always pegged a Dorothy. But it took someone very special to be a Sophia. It took a tiny force of nature. And, to be perfectly honest, no one could ever compare to the amazing Ms. Estelle Getty. The woman could sling the one-liners with the best of them. So the news yesterday of her passing at age 84 left a hole as big as she was tiny in my heart. I'm going to sit down and have a slice of cheesecake in her honor today. Grab a fork and join me around the kitchen table, won't you.