Things in life that matter most are rarely things.

Many moons ago, long before there was such a thing as an internet meme,

long before there was even such a thing as the internet,

I had an original thought.

I’m convinced that since then, it has been stolen, and happily so.

A father of three now grown and wonderful children, I have always been an advocate of teaching them important maxims to live by such as “do good in school,” “use the crosswalk” and “don’t do drugs.” Okay, well, I taught them other important things like “obey the law,” “save for retirement”…

This intro is not going well.

Many moons ago, I taught my young children this simple truth:

Like things and Love people.

How and when it occurred to me I couldn’t say, but since they were babies, apt to fall in love with their toys, I preached it. I’m fairly certain that I preached it so much, my tombstone will one day be inscribed with it. Many decades later, the saying is plastered all over the internet and I’m reasonably sure it began with me.

I failed miserably as a father and a role model. But I never got my “likes” and “loves” mixed up.

Love, the most important word in any language, loses its meaning and power when expressed to an inanimate object. Practically speaking, you can’t “love” or express the sentiment of devotion and commitment to something which by nature cannot hear it, appreciate it nor return it. A misapplication of this magnitude is a tragic error of the human vernacular. Love is not a colloquialism. It is not so cheap as to be applied to a banana or an Iphone. Bananas go brown. Iphones crack and die and neither has a soul. We throw them away or trade them in for new ones, only to express the same erroneous sentiment and devotion over and over again.

But Love.

Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth was written from a hellish jail, yet perfectly defines the uniquely human aspect of the object of love. We’ve no need to be patient, kind or selfless with a banana. We may like them a lot but we eat them at will and can stick one in our armpits if we want and the banana suffers no loss or shame.

To my defense, I “liked” drugs for eight years, but never loved them.

However, I have ALWAYS loved my children, even when I was spending time liking drugs more than loving my kids. Liking something is a temporal thing. It’s a changing taste that tosses aside the previous when something better comes along like a pumpkin spice latte.

Loving, however, is about a heart commitment and an emotion for someone that doesn’t change when they get ugly, act mean, cause pain, seem to lose flavor, or if I dare risk it, if they do drugs.

The one thing I did well as a father was to teach my kids to Like things and Love people.

I’m pretty sure that somehow, having repeated those words so many times so many moons ago helped them to forgive even me and love me anyway for all those years I was absent from their lives, liking meth.

Now, with another clean and sober anniversary just around the corner, I’m reminded of the time I was haunted and hunted down by my own lesson that saved my life.

Things in life that matter most are rarely things unless they can also love you back.

So, if you love this story, you already missed the point. Press like and try again.

Things in life that matter most are rarely things.

I rather like irregular people.

Ones dealt the most hands know most about losing and winning.

Ones most weathered tell fascinating storm stories with each wrinkle and scar.

Ones most alone are virtuosos of solitude and reflection without complaint.

Ones missing limbs are masters at compensation.

I rather like irregular people as they define compassion for others who will listen.

LMSM,

Don

My friend, Terry, likes to tell the story of having been accused of inappropriate behavior with two teen girls at school.
It seems the girls reported to the school authorities a couple instances wherein Terry reportedly made suggestive sexual comments to them during school hours and encouraged them to show their private parts. The incidents, as you can imagine, were reported to district authorities who launched a full investigation and completed it without Terry ever even knowing it was underway.

One morning when Terry showed up for school and entered the classroom, school police and other authorities were lying in wait. Without a word, they escorted Terry to a meeting room where a tribunal on the accusations was to be held without notice that very morning. Dumbfounded at what was going on, Terry texted a close friend to come and witness the event. However, upon arrival, he had to wait outside the door of the meeting.

The event began with the authorities citing written and recorded statements from the two girls alleging the crimes and the sordid details of each as well as the procedures of surveillance which had been secretly underway for weeks prior to this morning’s meeting. My friend was given no forum to talk or respond and it was quite apparent that the authorities were convinced of Terry’s guilt as police escorts stood by outside prepared for a trip to jail on the charges.

At the end of the hearing when they asked Terry for a comment before being taken away in handcuffs, the waiting friend was asked to be admitted to the hearing. The leader of the tribunal obliged and the friend emerged in the doorway. As he approached his imminently convicted friend Terry, he said “Hi honey, what happened?” and kissed him on the cheek.

As they stood there together, the “court,” so quick to arrive at a conviction, stared in obvious disbelief and embarrassment at what they apparently had overlooked. Without discussion, the proceedings were adjourned and Terry and his partner, a gay couple, were released to drive home without apology.

No more discussion on the event ensued. Ever. And my friend, so thoroughly disappointed in the leaders of his administration who failed to give him at least the benefit of the doubt, resigned his position and never returned.

There are any number of conclusions you could draw from this story.

Gender profiling, totalitarian tactics, abuse of authority, gay rights, due process…the list is wide open depending on what is most important and salient to you. In fact, as you were reading the story, which incidentally, is entirely true, you were probably drawing your own conclusions along the way, even though no reference was given to Terry’s gender or sexual preference until the very end.

The truth is, nobody listens without judgment. Processing information as a human, requires us to place some presumptive framework around it as we listen in order to be able to process the event as a whole, right or wrong. Stereotypes and primary assumptions have to be made to help the story make sense along the way. The unfortunate part of this is that when the story is completed, we stop there and oftentimes are quick to act on those presumptions of truth and begin our own individual tirades. It’s the difference between expressing an opinion and expressing an informed opinion.

Now go back and re-read the story. Terry (not my friend’s actual name to protect his identity) could have been a male or female, straight or gay, old or young, teacher or student, democrat or republican, and on and on.

Perhaps it’s our fast-paced lives that seemingly demand quick resolves to situations so we can move on to others. Maybe it’s our own individual histories and experiences which indelibly color our views and create knee-jerk responses.

Aren’t we a judging bunch.

But before we go apologizing all over the place for arriving too early and too definitively at sometimes wrong conclusions, don’t. For we are imperfect. Terribly and beautifully imperfect.

Personally, I think my buddy Terry showed great personal restraint and resolve and yes, grace, in the midst of his circumstances, which proved nothing short of a witch hunt. Knowledge of the truth of his innocence waited patiently while he was socially tortured and yet refused to volley the same kinds of judgments at his accusers as they were repeatedly spiking at him.

I believe he knew that at some point, the truth would be given a forum and by its own evidences, would trump the lies of his would- be enemies. This is much like Jesus did upon his accusation, arrest, conviction and crucifixion. He knew his innocence and while he had to suffer undeservedly, in a few days time, the truth would prevail.

I’m reluctant to try to drive home a single point here. There are so many lessons you might walk away with when you close your browser and move on with your day. I do hope, however, that you find one that applies to you. Perhaps how you’re a bit too judgmental and need to keep that in check today. Maybe you are angry at injustices which have been served you like those endured by my friend and need to let go of the hate for awhile. And maybe you will realize the value of a bit more patience in your day at work or home.

Paul Little once wrote, “Truth is Truth, regardless who believes it.” I believe that withholding judgments, exercising patience and managing your emotions, you might also find it to be true and when it comes time to render your own opinions on something important…and the time will come,…your opinion will be a fully informed one.

For those are the kinds of opinions that command respect, attention and admiration of others who still need to learn a lesson from a witch hunt.

He climbed up on the sofa, put his arms around my neck, and loved me, furiously licking the tears as they streamed down my face after the phone call.  He knows this will mean we can’t be together as much anymore, but he’s seen me at my worst and loyal as the day is long, it was his way of telling me it’s all gonna be better. That’s just the way dogs are.

Eight months is a long time.  I’ve been out of work since March and living on $104.50 a week unemployment, the benefits of which are scheduled to expire next week. With the gracious help of my forever best friend and roommate, Craig, (who is not much of a reader and says he’ll wait for my stories to become a movie,) I’ve kept afloat.  I’ve not accepted charity or favors well.  I’m aware over the course of these months, I’ve denied some the blessings that come with giving.  Others have creatively found their way into my pantry, pocket and bank account when times were particularly tough.  I’ve been kidnapped and treated to dinner and a movie and found bills paid before they even arrived.

A man of words, I am at the moment without any.

The call came this afternoon officially offering me the job I’d interviewed for last week.  While I thought it had gone quite well, I also thought I might hear sooner.  But a couple things had to happen first.  Hindsight is 20/20 you know.

Through the course of the past several years, I have met and friended many new people. People of all persuasions, genders, colors, personalities, traits and states.  I had to.  After my divorce and the loss of my core of friends, many of whom were probably scared of their own issues, some of which were at the disputing core of my own, I found life kinda sucked being abruptly alone, disenfranchised from all I had known for 35 years.  In my new, but increasingly shallow and disappointing life, I was a subculture king, liked and loved …but for all the wrong reasons. Enter drugs. Exit drugs. Exit drug people. And most recently, exiting the remnant of drugless, but similarly unhealthy people from my life, the last of which occurred only yesterday.

Going from lots of friends, to no friends, to lots of the wrong kinds of friends, to no friends again, and now, a final sift of the unhealthy remnant…rest assured, if you’re reading this now, you probably made the cut and are part of a healthy contingent I need to be hanging out with these days.  I thank you for making my trip worthwhile.

Since my sobriety a couple years ago, social and emotional cutoffs from people has been nothing short of a slaughter, leaving me almost alone once again until a year ago when I got a new friend and let him in my life.  Puppies are the best teachers of love and trust. Instinctively, it’s what they do best. My roommate and close family have noticed a difference in my life ever since.  I have begun allowing people of my past back in, slowly, judiciously.

In my stories here, I have been raw and honest about things of my past and hopes for my future and reflective on some of the best times of my life.  Some have said I’ve been perhaps too open and detailed.  Humbug.

The way I figure it, I have maybe 25-30 years left here and I have vowed to pay all my bills and with what remains, do the best for myself and others and die with no regrets.  Naysayers and difficult people are too much work anymore. (That is, unless they are clients and I am getting paid to listen.)

The past eight months were a necessary post-sobriety curing period. When you are jobless, you have a lot of time to yourself to think, realize and change.  You learn humility, self-denial and frugality in ways only unemployment can teach.  And only when you are entirely ready do the planets align for you, allowing the dominoes to fall in rapid succession to make up for lost time, attempting to fulfill your destiny before you go belly up and six feet under.

To my new and growing posse of friends and the old stand-bys who patiently endured my whining while they waited for this moment, “thank you” seems a trite and inadequate response.  So how about this?

“Sorry, I need to get ready for work!”

I’ve waited for 8 months to say that once again.

LMSM,

Don

(Note: Many of my readers, having known me during my years as a psychotherapist, suggested I share some of the things that I have found to be most helpful to my clients.  In contemplating this story, I decided to share an insight, which in practice, was an intervention I used largely without their awareness, the explanation of which would have been unnecessary for their successful therapeutic outcome.  The best therapy is when a skilled therapist gently induces an intervention within the context of the helping relationship, thereby not appearing to be prescribing anything more than an invitation to consider one’s thinking.  The result is the client comes to his own epiphanies and therein is ultimately more empowered and engaged in the change he originally sought.  This change is referred to as change of the “second order.”  The therapist in the equation essentially becomes incidental, the client improves and moves on in life.

A discussion of this topic may have a tendency to come across as more “academic” than you are accustomed to here on my site. Therefore, I’ll try to simplify and streamline it so that it has maximum opportunity to hit you straight between the eyes, the scar of which may just change how you live and see yourself forever.)

So the frustrated wife complains of her husband’s lack of attention with an example: “You never bring me flowers.”  That afternoon, the compliant husband, seeing he has the time, ability and means, returns home with flowers for his wife. “Thank you,” she says. “They’re lovely. I knew you really cared.” Pleased with the response and the outcome that night, the husband and wife are happy.

For awhile.

The drug addict, strung out on crystal methamphetamine, realizes the loss of his teeth, his job and income are taking a huge toll on his well-being.  He decides to quit using. His teeth and health improve, he finds work and can pay his bills once again.

For awhile.

Change can be good, but oftentimes for all the wrong reasons.

Now let’s play the two scenarios a little differently.

So the frustrated wife complains of her husband’s  lack of attention with an example:“You never bring me flowers.”

That afternoon, the compliant husband, sees he has the time, ability and means, to return home with flowers for his wife…but before he visits the florist, he recalls the deeper meaning he almost buried within his wife’s complaint. He has been working longer hours, gets lost in mindless video games at night as his way of decompressing. He has been noticeably depressed at work and his friends have made comments. Shamefully and honestly, he thinks about how useful his wife is in cleaning up, feeding him and having sex with him a couple times a week despite her frustrations. This wasn’t why he first fell in love with her 20 years ago.  He stops by the park for a little solitude and reflection and not just a few sobs alone on a dirty bench, ashamed of how he has shown little regard for her other than for what she does for him versus who she is as a woman. A maid. A prostitute. Wiping his face on his sleeve, he continues on to the florist and returns home.  Upon arrival, he takes one of the giant red rose floral arrangements and places it on her bedroom night stand with a handwritten apology poem that doesn’t rhyme, but still, shows a genuine brokenness and renewal of promises he has never revealed to her before.  The other bouquet, he disassembles petal by petal from the front door, up the stairs and into the candlelit bedroom with the final petals falling randomly on the bed and waits for her arrival home from work. “Thank you,” she says. “They’re lovely. I knew you really cared.”Pleased with the response and the outcome that night, the husband and wife are happy.

Forever.

The drug addict, strung out on crystal methamphetamine, realizes the loss of his teeth, his job and income are taking a huge toll on his well-being…and in a quiet moment with a .45 caliber pistol to his head, deciding why he wants to live anymore, he is scared into a sudden series of epiphanies answering that very question.  He phones the friend he defriended months ago when he became sober, apologizing for his abandonment and swallowing his pride for the moment, perhaps the first time since he began using many years ago, and asks his sober friend for help.  The friend shows up within 10 minutes, discards the gun and embraces his desperate friend for an hour.  They go to the 5pm meeting of Crystal Meth Anonymous together and his sobriety begins.  He decides to quit using. His teeth and health improve, he finds work and can pay his bills once again.

Forever.

“Well that’s a horse of an entirely different color, “ as we remember the gatekeeper to Oz responding to Dorothy, pleading for entrance because it was the only hope she had to find home once again.

There is change…and then there is change.

What differentiates the two?

Call it desperation. Call it God. Call it an epiphany from the far reaches of the universe which had been lying in wait to be delivered at just such an opportune moment.  Call it a horse of a different color, crafted by the Wizard, ready to take you home.

My moment came after I was arrested.

I had already paid for two weeks of Bartending School to start in September and had saved a substantial amount of money which would pay the balance of my child support and provide enough to pay my bills and expenses for six months, perhaps more if I stayed clean and was particularly frugal. I had a mental plan to immediately cut off all drug contacts, fabricate a story about a sudden horrible illness and post a new sign at my front door which said “THE CHENS” as if drug seeking visitors would be persuaded that my residence was now occupied by a Chinese family…and would with any luck, walk away puzzled.  For awhile.

But it was August 28^th, 2011 and before all my September plans could fall neatly into place, the narcotics detectives in surveillance of my house for months prior, decided to abruptly move up my stop date without prior notice…and with handcuffs.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into detail of my own story which you can read here at my website if it helps (Scroll to page bottom, hit “older stories” and read “My 9-1-1”.)  My forever began here.

The twist of the second order…

In the first scenario, the wife who had spent the last several years frustrated, fantasizing about other men, and who also had a bag packed and a plan to leave him, is now not quite sure what to do with herself as a result of what appears to be a genuine, systemic change in her husband.  Her ways of dealing with him, herself and her own beliefs and values seem to now be in disarray.  Though she has her airline tickets to depart on Tuesday, she stuffs them in the top of her closet along with her luggage just in case this man she married 20 years ago might be the real deal after all.

In the second scenario, the addict whose commitment to change included not answering calls from his partying friends, having changed his phone number and his address and now spending more time alone than ever before in his life…finds his decision evoking the anger and insults of his dissed “friends.” In addition to developing new skills for managing his new sobriety, he is also faced with the reality that he really has no true friends and that he lacks the necessary skills to make healthy drug-free relationships.  But he will find a way. He has to.

After years of training and for many years subsequent, I was a very successful psychotherapist. I worked in private practice as well as in group and hospital practices.  I learned many things about helping others, but perhaps the best education was in learning how to help one to help himself.  I am convinced that my practice was most successful due to that last point.

While I lapsed into and swam in my addiction for a few years, several planets were aligning in my life which eventually lifted me out of the mire. Timing, events, God, my despair, etc…all unified on 9/11/11 when it became clear to me I could no longer get high enough to ignore the Voice any longer.

If knowledge, formal or otherwise, does not morph into wisdom, your efforts are without reward.

In the practice of psychotherapy, there is a school of thought which refers to how people change in thinking and behavior over the life span.  That thinking suggests that circumstances and enlightenments of our experience create “first-order change” and,  if we are very lucky,  “second-order change.” The first scenarios illustrate the idea of first order change.  The second set of the same scenarios—and the aforementioned subsequent dilemmas of both the wife and addict—illustrate what true, second order change in one person can create for self and others, the creation of a “crisis of homeostasis” of second-order change, the horse of a different color.

Change is easy.

Sustained change, notsomuch.

Change is attainable. We know it. We do it every day.

Different results, better performance, improved relationships…we use our present knowledge, alter our behaviors and employ our abilities to effect that change.  However, second order change, which requires the complete altering of mind-set, attitude and beliefs is a more complex task, but the dividends are ten-fold.

William A. Guillory, (2007) “The FuturePerfect organization: leadership for the twenty-first century – Part I”, Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 39 Iss: 1, pp.52 – 58

I always find that making a graphic representation of a difficult concept makes it more palatable for visual learners like myself. The graphic above shows the primary difference between making a change of the first order and making a change of the second order…sustainable change.

Most of us can proceed through life making first-order adjustments along the way, be reasonably successful, reasonably happy and die reasonably unchanged.

That’s not good enough for me, and I will venture to say it is also not good enough for you now that you have read this far and will forever know that there is more to life change than just reasonably “okay outcomes.  Much more.  It’s the difference between “for awhile” and “forever.”

Change of the second order requires self examination, humility, deep gut honesty, determination and follow through.  You might also add forgiveness, repentance, and a deep education of the heart.  Those who have been enlightened to second order changes, either by force or by volition, never turn back to living how they once did.  It’s dissatisfying.

So my hope in closing is that I have presented the idea of change in a way perhaps you never considered.  In doing so, I hope the idea hit you some place in the vicinity of your forehead…or better yet, your heart. And if you ever decide to make those very difficult changes in your life that have been hanging around like 10 pound ankle weights, you may know the optional kind of freedom and vibrance of a truly full life that comes with change of the second order.  If you don’t, I’m sorry to have stuck an idea in your head which is likely mess with every decision you’ll ever make forevermore.   Please forgive me.

I’m a changed man.

Perhaps you, too, will join me and think differently, for a change.

LMSM,

Don

The  “My 9/11” story on this site (see “older posts” link at the bottom of the page,) will be Monday morning’s guest blog on my friend’s very popular website. A little about Joseph Sharp..

Hi, I’m Joseph Sharp, the author of Quitting Crystal Meth: What to Expect & What to Do (CreateSpace 2013). I have two other books: Living Our Dying (Hyperion 1996, translated into Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese) and Spiritual Maturity (Penguin Perigee 2001, translated into Spanish). I’m a longtime survivor of HIV (over 30 years) and of cancer (just over a year as of this writing in May of 2013). I’m also a recovered crystal meth addict.

The following was his very kind message to me this morning:

Hey Don, I’ll be posting your guest blog this coming Monday at 1am. I’ve linked to your website at the front and end of the article so hopefully you’ll get some more traffic. And if not right away, it’ll be in the archives.  Anyhow, I want to to thank you again and say, again, how much I enjoy your blog. Not only is it usually poignant but you are a very good writer, something not so common in the blog world I find.  Best, Joseph

Quitting Crystal Meth – Recovery & Community

Please visit, read and LIKE his Facebook Page.

Of all humanly virtues I glimpse in action

I find humility most attractive.

It speaks silent volumes of your character

so you don’t have to.

It is the unfeatured attraction which magnetizes others and selflessly reveals the presence of greatness without  a summons, the spirit without a potion, and the notion without an action.

It is the simple, subtle, sultry sense of an unpunctuated smile from across the room unaware of its own potently captivating fragrance.

Its effect, alluring,

Its existence,  entrancing.

Its essence, unintended.

It is both effortless confidence and its own purest consequence distilled for no one yet inebriating all in its presence.

Strategically planned and tactfully executed, the net effect of an original practical joke can be priceless.

The ability to run incredibly fast also helps.

Once upon a time, many years before camera phones and YouTube postings, practical jokes were widely accepted gestures of goodwill among members of tightly knit subcultures who knew instinctively how to retaliate, practically speaking.

I am not typical of bookstore patrons.  When there are that many books of all conceivable genres in one place, it’s like a golden ticket treasure hunt at the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory.  I was single at the time, having bought my first new home, and though I had virtually no furniture, I was spending money on books, and plants and beer.  Enough beer and a good book and you can sleep anywhere.

The bookstore aisle I enjoyed the most was one for bizarre humor.  That evening, the thick hard-backed book that caught my eye, would turn out to be a handbook for some of the most fun episodes of my life.

“Spite, Malice & Revenge” was its name.

Now as a caveat, those who know me best know I’m not a spiteful person. I’m not malicious either. And they can attest to the fact I never seek revenge for dastardly acts against me.  But those who know me best also know the first place to look when an unexpected prank is pulled.

Commandeering one of those cushy upholstered miniature sofas in a back aisle, I began feeding my dark side with all manner of brilliant and wonderfully creative ideas. I was lost in the book there for perhaps hours.

These days, if you were one moseying through the displays in a bookstore and observed some entranced guy frantically taking notes on a pad through an eerie grin, oblivious to his surroundings as he chuckled through the pages of “SPITE, MALICE & REVENGE,” you would have ample reason to call the police or homeland security.

I escaped before they arrived.

Having bought the book, I went home to select my mark(s) and scheme into the wee hours.

Over the next few years, I enlisted the assistance of a few equally evil-minded cohorts to carry out some mildly elaborate pranks on my most naïve friends who I knew had no concealed weapons permits.  Safety first.

Among my greatest achievements in this ongoing life adventure, the outcome of which was an immediate and radically thinning of my social circle, was the staging of a murder.

They were out of town, which of course helps when you’re planning a murder scene in their driveway.

A neighborhood in physical decline, their house was top and center at the end of a cul de sac .The deeply sloped driveway was in full view of anyone turning onto Denby Circle. With the assistance of a well-connected friend, and a roll of official yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS barrier tape at 2am one Wednesday morning before their arrival home, we wrapped the crime scene.  The instructions suggested an ample supply of catsup and some thick white chalk.  The family of four, two adults, two children, were posed on the driveway by my friend as I outlined her body in various grotesque positions flowing down the grade.  Strategic squirts of catsup added lovely touches to the artwork which glistened under the early morning street lamps and was visible from the end of the street.

Like adolescent pranksters, we left the scene and came home to giggle and laugh at what fun it would be to see their faces when in just a few hours, they turned the corner home.

Later that morning, after having laughed ourselves to sleep, the phone call came.  It was them! Expecting a snort and chucklefest as we prided ourselves in the prank, the unexpected happened. Their trip home had been delayed a day.

As I hung up the phone, the two very predictable words which emerged from my lungs at max volume were followed by a shuddering reality.

It was just about the time of morning when all hardworking men and women left their homes, briefcases in hand, kissed their spouses good day and waved to their neighbors as they drove off to make the day’s wage.  On Denby Circle, families-turned-militia, mourning the grotesque, overnight loss of the loving Christian family at the end of the street, were still wondering how they’d slept through the bloody massacre.

A full 24 hours later, the Denby Circle neighborhood watch on full patrolling alert, our friends cheerily turned the corner, happy to be arriving home.

The call I received from them was short and to the point:

“Do NOT, I repeat…DO NOT come over or they will kill you in the street.”

The prank intended for our family friends had become a criminally punishable act of terror on dozens of families and children who found sleep during the weeks that followed in short supply.  Upon arrival home, our good-natured friends exiting the family van were a psychological shock to the patrolling neighbors who screamed in communal terror at the family they had since come to believe had suffered sudden and gruesome deaths only the day before.

After a couple months, when Denby  Circle had returned to a cautious homeostasis, the tables turned.

My wife and young car-seated kids and I were exhausted, having driven non-stop from a rushed Thanksgiving weekend with family in Phoenix.  Exiting the freeway, our final approach home was under a mile as we let out signs of relief, hoping to leave bags in the van and immediately crawl into bed for a needed nap.

We had missed a couple of the cardboard signs below eye-level on the street corners as we made the second to the last turn home, but the one in front of us caught our notice.

MUST SELL TODAY.

$35,000

1112 SHIFTING SANDS

–>

We had both seen the sign but our mutual, sleep-deprived minds processed it much too slowly. Still silent, but each of us obviously caught up in thoughts we began to psychically share on our final turn onto our long street, I floored it as we turned to each other in a Home Alone-esque scream.

The crowd of real estate agents, vultures who’d taken residence for who knows how long in front of our home awaiting our arrival and in full view of the huge 4’x8’full color professional sign erected in our front yard, blocked our driveway.  Various neighbors, thoroughly irate at what they believed was our attempt to instantly undercut neighborhood home valuation by what would be at least 80% in what was certain to be the sale of the century, laid in wait in their lawn chairs eating turkey leftovers and saving the carcasses for a satisfying slaughter of the Miller Family.

Of course, we’d woken the kids up with unrestrained laughter as we found a parking space down the street and briskly walked up to our front door.  The master rolodex of a corporate secretary couldn’t hold the fire hazard of business cards wedged in every crevice.  Car doors up and down the street opened as realtors raced to be the first to cut a deal.

The turkey carcasses rained like tomahawk missiles from all hating directions.

Like celebrities pursued by paparazzi, we sealed ourselves and the kids inside. Apart from the relentless knocking and ringing of the doorbell, the continuous beep of the maxed out answering machine was all we could hear as we picked up the phone to call the culprits on Denby Circle to demand a truce.

Suffice to say, as close as our families had been, it was no longer safe to visit each other at our respective homes.  Ever.  I pulled one last prank on them which had sealed that deal.

Simply, I had taken several random old house keys and assembled them onto rings labeled with the Denby Circle address and tossed them into the seediest neighborhoods in town.

During young adulthood, my best of friends and I lived in a perpetually alternating state of laughter and terror, never knowing, but always expecting another page of what had now become a very popular book among our friends,  to come to life at home, work or on the street without warning or apology.

Friends.

You gotta have ‘em.

You gotta love ‘em.

You gotta get back at them every chance you get.

We are all much older now and hopefully more mature.  We can’t pull off such spectacles as we did back in those days where our camaraderie’s as co-conspirators cemented our family bonds.

But what a legacy we have left.

Our kids, now at the ages we were, once terrorists in training, are making best friends our old-fashioned way.

And looking over their shoulders daily…as we once did.

LMSM,

Don

He was only seven years old and depending on the events of that Friday, he was either desperately in need of some loving, gentle guidance or a swift back hand. Either way, Jay was a great kid, really. He just always arrived completely disassembled. I had never tried to piece together a respectful young man, but accepted the challenge every Friday night for over a year.

You could taste the estrogen in his home. Three women, none of whom had a clue about what it’s like to be a boy or what a boy needs to become a gentleman, were trying all the wrong things in my opinion. Two generations above him, his portly Grandma was from the well-fed bayous of Louisiana and empress of the kitchen stove, the burners of which daily licked at a large beaten silver pot, wide as it was tall. And it was always there, always steaming and always full of some southern blend of fish or stew or unidentifiable tomato gumbo soupy stuff. Though she referred to it each Friday by a different name when I showed up for dinner, it always tasted the same. And because it was always there and always on in the same position, I seriously wondered if Saturday through Thursday weren’t just days when new ingredients were added at random from the refrigerator or scraped in from the plates of other mealtimes. I could see why Jay always relished going out to dinner with me.

I’m guessing he’s about 34 now, the same age as his mother when I first met her working together on our new church magazine. She was a sensual, mysterious woman in every regard. Southern, thin frilly-flowered dresses, milky white skin and fluffy blonde hair. Her sister, who completed the female royalty of the household, was much the same, only several years older, taller and much more weathered.

I saw a lot of myself in little Jay. He was the cherished prince of the household, the only male child and without fatherly influences or male role models for the entirety of his young, impressionable life. Though we were unlike in some regards, like me, he was the proverbial “boy in the window.”

There was no escaping the touch, the advice or the eye of the female aristocracy, so for the sake of survival, he’d learned to embrace their ways. Privy to their gossip about the other gender, the idiosyncratic female ways and for years enduring the mood swings of their unified monthly cycles, he was a boy drowning in estrogen who needed a savior. When he chanced to lift himself up to peer outside the window at the other neighborhood boys at play, he was scolded not to fall, enveloped once again into the overly protective womanly ways of the household.

Jay definitely needed a savior.

Tired of the silver pot dinners—both of us—one Friday night, I broke the ritual.

“Jay and I are gonna take off and get a bite tonight, y’all,” I said in a mock southern drawl, hoping the humor would compensate for the disinviting it implied. I had seen how he looked at me so many Friday night visits before which had taken their course and I got up to leave for home. He’d yearned to be able to do the same. The boy inside him needed the man inside me if not for just for the influence of one night a week.

I don’t think we waited for a discussion of my proposal nor an approval. We were out the door, in the car and driving off fast as boys do. He loved misbehaving with me and I could take the heat of the female disapproval for the both of us if needed upon our return. Tonight, we were defiant, forgetting to take our coats and determined to dine on fast food and root beer for a long time. High five!

Entering Long John Silvers, the lip of the silver counter stretched half the length of the restaurant, ending at the very round black woman commanding the cash register. I walked sidestep, eyes feasted upward at the menu bannering the wall above. I took mental note of the selections to dictate our order at the finish line where our defiantly delicious dinner could begin.

“What the hell are you doing, man? That’s just sick, Jay!,” I yelled out, seeing his tongue, lick the length of the silver counter on its way toward me. Clearly, he’d not been schooled in the gentlemanly manners of dining out. Perhaps never.

I paid and together, we mocked the stride of the gentleman who’d departed the register before us. Our pace entering the dining room, fine plastic cutlery in hand, to the table with a view, was deliberately dignified as if we were some proper gents in a castle. He cracked up as boys should, but can’t around years of smothering women. Taking seat and waiting to be served, I explained the manly art of napkinning. I showed him how it could be folded and tucked in the collar, shaken to the side and laid in the lap, or, in his case, both.

The butler presented us a tray of assorted, quite scrumptious, deeply fried, artery clogging somethings so covered in greasy, crusted batter, we weren’t exactly sure it was what we ordered, but it didn’t matter. As refined gentlemen we were there for the moment, and we didn’t care.

For men, once the food arrives, all decorum is off. The goal that evening was to munch with our mouths open, burp loudly, fart occasionally and talk about guy stuff.

Of course, being only seven and curious being exposed to this new environment, he won the competition for “most disgusting tableside act” in the final round, peeling and chewing the dry, discolored rind from the lip of the ketchup bottle.

“Bravo!,” I cried out, awarding his achievement with a greasy napkin to the head.

We talked much longer than the food lasted. It was mostly about sports, school and guy stuff and after a belching contest, made our way out the door and back to the palace where a worried royal ensemble impatiently laid in wait for our arrival.

He raced me to the door and it opened on its own. His mother remarked how she’d been busy with affairs of the house and asked about our outing. We vowed to keep the belching contest our secret so we rattled off some menu items we enjoyed and how to fold napkins properly as a cover up. He glanced my way. I winked at him and he laughed his way down the hall to get his bath before bed as instructed.

Jay and I spent many Friday nights out on boy excursions to eat disgusting food or play video games, throw a ball and sometimes to just to escape. It became the highlight of his week–and mine.

I don’t know what became of Jay. As I said, it’s been many years. The matriarch and her princesses moved away and I recall our last Friday together as the moving truck sped off. I watched the tearful face of the boy in the window for the final time and I winked and waved, wondering what might become of him and if our many Friday nights might somehow have changed the manhood of his destiny.

I still sometimes imagine him having found a wife or lover, the wisdom of a gentleman, or at least, the peace that comes with finally feeling he was one of the guys learning to be a man in the midst of an estrogen ocean.

I know that at least for a little while every Friday night, I did.