Respect the potter... Al would've.

I will say one thing up front here... this is going to be a short post. There's a couple reasons for that... one, a friend told me that I should wait for tomorrow to write because I'm tired, it's late, and I've had a couple cocktails, and two, it's pretty late and I don't really have a lot to say. I didn't do much of anything today, so I don't really have a good take on anything.

Regardless, here goes. Josh, my next door neighbor came over tonight after doing his second job. That's right, his second job lets out at 9:30PM on a Monday night. So, around 9:45, there's a knock on my door... I know before getting off the couch exactly who it is. I don't think that I've written about Josh since I started this thing, and I feel pretty bad about it... so maybe it's time that I give him his just due, or due diligence, or whatever you want to call it.

Across the hall from me, dwells a soul that is truly a free spirit... one of the nicest people I have ever met, and one of the most honest and "real" people I have ever had the pleasure of encountering. His name is Josh. I call him "Kramer." If you have ever seen an episode of Seinfeld, you will know exactly what I'm talking about. He's textbook Kramer... the guy that knocks on your door out of nowhere, comes in with a good take on whatever you're dealing with, has a couple beers, and calls it a night. Every time he comes over here, we'll just sit and talk about virtually nothing. However, that "nothing" conversation always blossoms into so much more. There's conversations about women, about relationships, about his job and mine, and pretty much anything under the sun that you would want to talk to someone across the hall that drinks your beer and smokes your cigarettes about. Was that considered a run-on sentence?

So we have a couple of beers, and a couple of Josh's friends call him on his cell... pretty much for the same reason that I enjoy talking to him so much... he's got a good take on everything, and there's no bullshit... just a flat out good kid, whose innocence and honesty are so sobering that you'd think that you just spent 10 years in AA (not to knock AA at all... I have a friend that's going on his 2nd year of sobriety and I couldn't be more proud of him). Please don't think for a second that I feel that innocence and/or honesty are bad traits by any stretch of the imagination, but rather honorable traits that I wish more people I dealt with had. I love having the priveledge of having him live across the hall... I think that he. more or less, grounds me.... that he brings me back to reality and gives me a taste of what it's like to be in his shoes. Don't get me wrong... I don't want to say that he's some poverty-stricken loser... he does what he loves, and does whatever it takes because he loves what he does. I have an enormous respect for that.

Not to get off the "what a good guy Josh is" tip, but here's the story. We were watching TV, which pretty much consists of him drinking my beer and me flipping channels, when we came upon some show where there were a bunch of people carrying a casket... pall bearers. Immediately it sparked a response in me. A few years ago, I was a pall bearer for one of my best friend's dad. To be as candid as I can, I didn't like it. Honestly, I felt too close... like I was carrying someone that I cared about so much that I can't put it into words, to someplace where I knew I would never see them again. I felt like the grim reaper. I felt like I was putting that person somewhere that would be so final, so conclusive, and such an end to such an animated life that my doing this was only hurting one of the few people outside of my family that I do, in fact, consider part of my family. I hope that if he reads this, that he knows how important he is to me, and that I do love him like a brother. I pray that my carrying his father to his final resting place brought some solace and comfort to him, and that he knows how much I cared for and respected his father. I also hope that if he somehow happens to stumble upon this post that he knows that he has the most beautiful daughter that I have ever seen, and that I can see so much of his mother and father in that little girl. He recently had another one, and I'm sure she's gorgeous, but I haven't had the pleasure of her acquaintance just yet.

To get back to my original point, I had mentioned that I said to Josh that I didn't like being a pall bearer. He was very quick to retort with, "why not?" I told him the whole story that I talked about earlier, and he had what I thought was a great response. He said that there's no greater honor than laying someone down for the last time... someone that you loved. He followed that up with something like, "if it were you, would you rather have someone that you barely knew carry your lifeless body?" That kind of made me think... and I think he's pretty right on with what he said. If it were me, yes, I think I'd like to have my best friends carry me to where my body would forever reside. Prior to this conversation, I didn't give it a second thought... I didn't really care. What that little pottery teacher from across the hall said both made me feel good about the whole carrying one of my best friend's father thing, and about my own mortality.

I think about my friend's father a lot. Not just so much about the funny stories that I've told about a zillion times, but about how much he cared about and loved his son that was 3,000 miles away at school... about the times when we went to dinner or played golf and he wouldn't hear of any of us paying for anything just because he knew that we were important to his son. There was nothing that he wouldn't do for any of us "kids," just because we were friends with his son. Back when I lived in Jamestown, every now and again, me and the rest of our little clique would go and visit my friend's father from time to time. Regardless of what time of night or day it was (usually night), he was always thrilled to see us. I have to believe that it brought back the memories of when we shared times with him and his son, and the joy he took in watching his son grow into what he eventually became. To take a quck sidebar here, his son, one of my best friends, is now a Vice President of one of the biggest banks in the world, has a lovely wife, and two wonderful daughters. I know that his father is looking down on them right now, wearing his driving cap, light blue short-sleeved striped golf shirt and khaki pants, screwing a Merit cigarette into his lips, yelling at that great bartender in the sky for a shot of Old Grand Dad, and he's smiling.

I've got a ton more that I could write about my friend's father... let's call him "Al," but that's another post. For now, that's all I'm going to put in print about "Al" and my friend. I could literally go on for hours on "Al" stories, but I'm going to call it quits for tonight. Besides, I'm wearing out the backspace key on my keyboard.

The only thing that I'll leave you with is that the next time you're out with some friends, and one of those friends happens to be someone like me that just happens to buy a shot or two, and you're looking for something to toast to (pretty standard fare in sunny Jamestown), I ask you to raise your glass and say, "this one's for Al." I know he'd appreciate it, and I know that he'd buy you one back.

Until next time, friends and neighbors... as always...

R