jumpingfish

1. Nameplate

“Who am I kidding?” I said.

He said he had a nameplate with my name on it. Something from years ago. He said I could come get it whenever I wanted. I said I would.  But then…

“Who am I kidding?” I said. “What on earth will I do with it? Can you just toss it?”

“Will do,” he said. “That’s very funny!”

2. Gotta Go

“I gotta go in five minutes,” he said just after I introduced myself.

The meeting was delayed, and he evidently needed to be somewhere else. In five minutes, he stood up and slung his pack over his shoulder.

“I gotta go,” he said. “I’m just a third-tier backup. I won’t be missed.”

He was right.

3. Moving Fast

“I’d like to see things slow down a bit,” he said.

I chuckled and said, “I need to write that down.”

I was out in the yard yesterday doing something; I don’t remember what. I was either filling the birdbaths or raking up the profusion of Ash seeds and acorns that have been falling. Something like that.

So I was out there, and this car drove by. An old white guy was at the wheel, and he slowed to a crawl as he passed, peering closely at the rental house across the street. This struck me as odd, as he didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would know Martín. I figured it was the lawyer/landlord who owns the place (along with 42 others), although truth be told we haven’t seen or talked to the guy other than thru his secretary for ten years. Then he drove on.

I didn’t think anything of it and continued watering or sweeping or whatever I was doing.

A while later, Guinness barked (He was helping with my chores.). And this same old white guy came walking down the street. He wore a red shirt with “Campbell” emblazoned across the front and was holding some papers under his left arm. He walked up to Alex’s house next door. A few minutes later I looked up, and this old white guy was walking back.

He seemed to be steering clear of our yard and looked at me sheepishly as I raised my head. He held up a stack of red papers, which seemed to match his shirt.

“I’d come over to talk to you, but…”

I figured he was going to say something about the barky dog.

“… but I don’t think it would doing any good.” And he pointed to our blue Lloyd Doggett campaign sign stuck in the grass near the curb.

I looked over at the sign and chuckled.

“Ok,” I said, “but good luck to you!”

He was silent for a moment and he kept walking.

“It’s hard work,” he said.

And he walked down to Joe and Irene’s house and knocked on their door.

My cell phone rang, so I stepped out of the conference room to answer it. When I returned, the man sitting next to me (truth be known, he seemed just a kid) leaned over and whispered something.

“I got up to get a bagel, and I spilled coffee on your laptop.”

He pointed to the corner of my MacBook Pro.

There was no evidence of anything, such an absence of absence in fact, that his confession was admirable. And confession indeed it was, for spilled-liquid-on-the-keyboard is the one thing that invalidates pretty much any warranty or goodwill you might have with Apple to to fixed a borked laptop.

“Did it get into the keys?” I asked.

“No, just on the corner there,” he said.

What courage that took, what conviction. He could have just sat quietly thru the rest of the meeting muching on his bagel and sipping (what was left of) his coffee. And he could have flown back to California (whence he came), and our paths would never have crossed again. And so if there was something amiss with the laptop, it wouldn’t have been trackable back to him. But he confessed his spill.

And in the end, no harm was done.

In fact, I hope our paths do cross again. This is a man I’d work with (or for) any day.

Where have you been?

Oh, I’ve been here.

But why so quiet?

I don’t want to talk about it.

About what?

I’ve fallen into a deep funk. Run out of pretty things to say.? The Monarchs fluttering and Goldeneye blossoms waving in the wind have lost their luster. And I just sit here looking around and shake my head.

About what?

You don’t want me to talk about it.

No, I do. Talk about it.

A courtroom in black and white. Spencer Tracy shouts at the courtroom and to the presiding judge:

Soon your honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward (backward!) through the glorious ages of that sixteenth century when bigots burned the man who dared be enlightened with an intelligence of the human mind.

Oh. I see.

Cheese. We sent him cheese for his twentieth birthday. Cheese made in Texas. The fair and industrious Trudy handled all the details and packed it in an insulated box, cooled down and shipped by a FedEx friend who knows how to do things like this.

He’s far away at school. And he likes cheese. And … you know … college students are always hungry. So we thought it would be the perfect thing to send. But we needed to let him know we sent it, so that he would pick it up while it was still cool.

Trudy called him. And texted him. And called. And emailed. And texted again. I called. And emailed. … crickets.

Then I called again, late one night from a hotel room in Orlando, thinking I’d give him one more try.

“Hi Dad,” he said in a hurried voice. “Sorry I haven’t been returning your calls. It’s been crazy busy today, and I’m in a meeting right now. Can I call you back?”

“Sure,” I said. And I picked up a book and got in bed and waited. And waited. And decided to turn the light off and just wake up when he called. But the call never came, and I woke up the next morning and packed to go home.

While I was waiting at the airport we finally connected, and he explained what he’d been up to and what was keeping him so busy and how he’d gone to get the package the day before but forgot his ID and how it was the end of the day so he’d have to get it tomorrow.

“Ok, but get it tomorrow or it might spoil,” I said. “Do you want me to tell you what it is?”

“No, it can be a surprise.”

So the next day he picked up the cheese from the mail room. He said it was still cool when he opened the package and that he had put it in a refrigerator.

That was last week.

Two days ago, we talked to him on the phone. He talked about his classes. And a lecture he’d gone to. And about his co-op board retreat. And about the birthday party his friends threw for him. He talked so fast about so many things that our faces were sore from smiling after being on the phone for an hour.

“And have you had any of the cheese?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I really need to have some.”

Right.