ton kambich is a tough guy, served in world war 2 and jumped out of planes into dangerous places. later, he let his softy side flourish. he and his wife carolyn opened a montessori school in northfield just outside of winnetka (not to say winnetka is a dangerous place). the couple was instrumental in the opening of the victoria montessori school in entebbe, uganda.
so i had to ask him about my trip to mexico city. about which i have been stressing. and about skydiving which is what captain reggie wants to do later in the month.
i don’t know. i’d love to have a rumor that i’m part of the c.i.a.
i pack and leave tomorrow. viva ciudad de mexico!!!! and from there, to facebook friends in houston. then memphis. then home. . . for a day and a half and then cleveland, ohio. i’m getting some wear on these treads.
tony says it’s fine about if the two releases don’t work. the third thing you do is clutch yourself in a particular manner and kiss your ass goodbye. please don’t tell me this is how the adventure will end!
steve quick was one of my first friends ever in winnetka. he worked at the front desk of the winnetka community house, signing up kids for karate, ballet, summer camp. we hung out while my kids took classes. we worked at the haunted house together–both of us, given the proper costume, can reduce a stone cold nine year old suburban child to tears with just a glance. steve and i even worked on the antiques and modernism shows that provided funds for the community house–both of us, given the proper costume, can reduce a stone cold dealer in french chinoiserie prints to tears with just a lift of an eyebrow.
steve is a survivor. of a tough childhood. wrenching marriage. and a bout with cancer.
steve quick — 1
cancer — 0
but a survivor of these circumstances sometimes needs to adventure and needs a soul mate. kate moulton is just such a gal. she is a survivor of three bypass surgeries in her young years. she occasionally is troubled by artial fibulation. which is to say that she has battled a rough spot.
the two of them struck out west to colorado a few years ago. for steve, it was a big change because he had worked behind the desk at the community house for eighteen years. for kate, who had been in wilmette illinois all her life, it was a leap of faith. the two of them have done well for themselves. times are tough–steve sometimes picks up day laboring jobs. kate works as a bartender. but they have found their eden, in fort collins, colorado. i am so so so happy for them. . . .
BUT
there’s stu fast. well, what happened is this: steve quit his job at the community house and wanted to access his facebook account. but the account was from an email address tied to the community house. therefore, facebook wouldn’t recognize him so he has had to change his identity to stu fast.
when he would sign for fedex and ups packages at the community house he would sometimes use the alias stu fast, as a take on steve quick. now that nickname comes in handy. but let him explain. . .
my new years resolution as of december 31 was to meet every facebook friend i had and that’s a considerable new years resolution. obviously not as difficult as losing five pounds (my usual resolution). but still. it’s day 74 of the year and last night i posted about tim crawford (73).
i’ve learned a lot about friendship and loyalty. i have on speed dial exactly who i’d call at two o’clock in the morning from the winnetka police department. i know who i’d party with if i won the lottery and who would be willing to party with me if i didn’t. but i don’t think i have a friend quite like gilbert gottfried.
gilbert is a comedian. never known for any sensitivity. known mostly for his braying voice, whether as the parrot named iago in disney’s aladdin or the duck in aflac supplemental insurance commercials. when he first opened a facebook account, he sent out friendship requests. i’m not sure why i got one, but i did and i happily accepted. but when i went to new york, i had nearly a dozen friends to meet. everyone was so helpful, from richard “mop” furniss (friend #53) who took me on a tour of the museum of sex to william clark (#60) who proposed. #58 john r. douglas took me to the morgan museum where i saw an actual shakespeare first folio. vince p. (#57) invited me to a party with real celebrities.
but gilbert never responded to my messages, emails, nothing. and then there’s this:
he tweeted some jokes like “the japanese are so advanced. they don’t go down to the beach. the beach comes to them” and “i just split up with my girlfriend. but like the japanese say, there’ll be another one floating by any minute” he has since been fired by aflac which gets a considerable share of its revenue from the japanese market and he’s dutifully issued the “i’m sorry if anybody was offended by what i said” apology which places the responsibility to say “oh, no, it’s okay, i’m just too sensitive” on everyone else. he’ll recover. he’ll have his defenders. he’ll do some charitable venture that will make up for it all. he will be, as charlie sheen says, winning.
i don’t take defriending lightly. it might be just facebook. but the real question for me isn’t whether he can make a bad joke or not. it’s whether he’s a friend. and he’s not. there is no part of him that is friend to me. there is no part of him i want to be friends with. so with deep regret, i must defriend him.
therefore, goodbye f2fb friend number zero mr. gottfried. i wish you all the commercial, professional and personal success in the world. just not on my facebook page.
in other news, i have new friends from israel–my story was featured on an israeli magazine site. also, tomorrow i am being interviewed for america in the morning by tom delach! but the most wonderful news is that i will spend some time with the artist loraine yolles (f2fb #74)
when i meet my facebook friends i want to do what they want to do, what they enjoy, what expresses themselves–so i figured tim crawford would want to tear apart a lion with his bare hands or throw boulders across the dupage river.
tim crawford is a big man. i’d guess him to be six four, maybe six five. he was an athlete at north central college where we met. he joined the navy right after college and has fought and served his country ever since. these days he teaches navy rotc at one of the toughest urban schools in the country and he also coaches track and field. he’s big, he’s tough, he’s strong.
and you know what? he’s reached an age, my age, where he doesn’t give a damn what people think of him. he’s proved himself. which means he can do what he pleases and he had some advice to give me on that score.
from his house, we drove twenty miles out to romeoville to a strip mall nail salon that didn’t look any different from any other nail salon. but the ladies knew him. and we had pedicures together. and not just a “file ’em down, put some polish on ’em” pedicures. there was hot bubbling water with bath salts. exfoliating. razoring calluses. massaging the calves. encasing the feet in hot liquid wax. i admit that last part made me cry and tim said pretty much “would you just take it like a man????” tim doesn’t get polish but he picked out a nice neutral silver shade for me.
i felt wonderful as we left the salon. and not just because my feet really felt different. i felt different. i felt pampered and taken care of and really quite free of anxiety and all my little demons. that’s when tim, who’s a pretty quiet guy, spoke up.
“i take care of myself,” he began as i pulled the car out into traffic. “i work six days a week. and hard work. have all my life. so one day a week, i completely devote to myself. manicure. pedicure. massage. getting my eyebrows waxed. haircut. take care of my car. my house. every sunday is tim crawford day. turn here.”
“isn’t your house back that way?”
“we’re getting chocolate.”
so we went into downtown naperville to a chocolate emporium. i did what every woman does. considered the smallest possible piece of something. because otherwise, i would end up regretting it when i got on the scale, right? but there was this cheesecake, with chocolate and caramel. i shook my head. tim gave me a look. again, he’s a big “don’t mess with me” guy. so i ended up sitting in front of the biggest plate of cheesecake. do i regret it? no.
some might initially think it’s a little sacrilegious to call sunday tim crawford day. or to call sunday their own day. but remember that first corinthians 6:19-20 tells us that our bodies are God’s temple. st. paul admonishes (he’s always admonishing–he really should have lightened up a little) that we should honor God with our bodies. that’s exactly what tim’s doing. and maybe that would be a good thing for me–if i honored my body the way tim honors his, perhaps i wouldn’t do the self-destructive fix-ups like anxiety attacks, withdrawing from the world, eating and drinking too much. if i knew that one day a week was my day, maybe i could do what needs to be done with the remaining six.
and so i ended up late. i missed the third naperville friend. and didn’t get to mendota. i fell behind the schedule because i took time to enjoy tim crawford day. that means i have to come back to naperville and from there, drive to mendota. tim says he gets a pedicure about once every three or four weeks. see you then, tim!
tim’s final comment:
a coda: my very best friends in the world, dick and vivian eastman, needed their friends, especially as they reached their nineties. i would come out some weekends just to say hi. one time, i asked tim crawford to stop by the house just to tell dick eastman what a great professor he had been when he was at north central college. tim is a wonderful friend!
when i went to the finnegan’s house on sunday morning, i was still feeling pretty low, thinking about how i let down f2fb #71 bonnie bradlee. i wake up every morning thinking this is a ridiculous and unmanageable and ultimately doomed to failure project, but now i was really ready to go straight home, get into bed, pull those covers up over the head.
the finnegans live in a quiet naperville neighborhood with emphasis on the word quiet. when john finnegan and i went to college, naperville had a population of 35,000 and there were corn and soybean fields surrounding the downtown. now there are over 150,000 people and it is as if God told noah to build an ark and put inside it one of every chain–applebee’s, olive garden, walmart, target, baker’s square. . . somehow the finnegans found the one place that isn’t staked out for a corporate parking space.
leigh finnegan welcomed me into the house and introduced me to their three children: grant, anna and stewart. grant is a natural wit, anna has a beautiful smile and stewart is a dead ringer for john when he was younger. john asked me what i wanted with my pancakes: syrup, butter, cheese.
cheese?
john’s favorite dish is not pancakes with cheese but rather, waffles with cheese. toaster waffles to be precise. the finnegan freezer is full of them. and the refrigerator has enough cheese that, well, john says he can eat eight or ten waffle and cheese sandwiches at a time. try it sometime! and then tell me about it.
john and i were friends when we were at north central college back in the late seventies. the very first time we met, i invited him to a movie. he thought it was a date. until he realized i was asking another guy as well. i was a pretty clueless teenager. then i told him about my experience with bonnie and how it was clear i hadn’t been a good friend to her. he begged to differ and then told the story of how the finnegan children exist because of me being clueless. . . .
as i drove away, i wanted to be adopted, maybe as a cherished aunt. john really is the luckiest of my friends!
next up: tim crawford is retired navy, teaches navy rotc at one of bloom trail high school in chicago heights (one of the toughest urban schools there is), coaches track and field. so what does he want to do on a sunday afternoon?
and . . . . i’ ¡m ya apenas un poco nervioso sobre ir a Ciudad de México! ¡pero será una aventura!
meeting every facebook friend means i get surprised sometimes, by an unexpected hobby or talent, by a challenge someone faces with courage and grace, by a secret heretofore unknown. yesterday, i was surprised by something awful i did thirty one years ago. something i have only recently been forgiven for.
i went to naperville north high school and was friends with bonnie bradlee. bonnie was funny, bright, and we “got” each other. she also didn’t seem to mind the strictures mrs. patrick put on my life–i couldn’t see friends outside of school. bonnie and i shared books, ideas, and we both had dreams. bonnie wanted to join the army. i was a princess who had been put up for adoption to shield me from enemies of the throne and one day i wanted to reclaim that country, whatever it was. i sure hoped it was an english speaking country, because i wasn’t doing very well in french class.
at the end of our sophomore year, things came to a boil in the patrick household. i ran away from home. i dropped out of high school. i was briefly in a juvenile detention center and was also briefly in a psyche ward full of other runaways. i ended up dropping out of high school and studied at north central college. that journey is a long one but the story here is about bonnie.
she finished high school. was rejected by the army–from all the branches of the military–because she has poor hearing in one ear. she was crushed. her life was spiraling. she even contemplated suicide. she asked me for help. i was nineteen and unsure of what was the best thing, but i knew dr. schwarz, the psychiatrist from the psyche ward i had spent two months in. i took her to see schwarz. schwarz immediately advised hospitalization, saying he was sure that her depression was a life threatening matter. i helped bonnie get admitted to the hospital. then she gave me her apartment key and told me to clean up her stuff. especially anything drug related, as her father was a police officer.
but my idea of cleaning was to basically to get rid of just about anything. a full apartment became a few garbage bags of stuff.
bonnie got out of the hospital at some point. i don’t really remember anything about our interactions then–in particular she recalls our last meeting as being very tense and i don’t remember it at all. i graduated college and moved to chicago. she worked at a variety of jobs and cared for her parents. five years ago she came to christ. or perhaps christ came to her. she is a happy, beautiful, settled woman who celebrates everyday the gift of salvation. she has also forgiven me. until yesterday when i saw her, i didn’t realize that i needed her forgiveness. i am grateful for that.
although she was upset with me, she was surprised herself by the fact that her hospitalization had a benefit that came to others. a few years ago, she was at a christian retreat. she was taking a few moments to dance in the rain, a celebration of her love for christ. as she finished dancing she noticed that she was being observed by a woman who was in obvious distress. the woman explained she had just gotten out of a hospital where she had been treated for addiction. her life was a mess because her husband was still a user. bonnie was able to use the experience of having been in a psyche hospital to relate to this woman. bonnie got help for her. it was a turn around for the woman, indirectly made possible by bonnie’s life experiences, directly made possible by bonnie’s generous nature.
i know i’m going to be surprised again, sometimes in ways that will make me feel bad about myself. for a few hours after i saw bonnie, i had a case of the guilts. did that hospitalization do more harm than good? was my scorched earth policy on her apartment a bad thing? had i caused bonnie to get off course in her life? this morning i’m trying to forgive myself. that might take a while.
make sure to meet bonnie yourself at menjesus.wordpress.com!!!!
i am amazed at the stories i hear of incredible courage, endurance, determination–and it’s always from people who look from the outside like they just coast through life. robin ladybird strong-robinson (f2fb #68) and alyce kingsley (f2fb #70) work at the zengeler dry cleaners in winnetka. phyllis vega used to work at zengeler but, in order to get out of a bad relationship, she moved to mendota recently (excuse me, facebook friends, no moving without my written permission! warner sills, i mean, taiwan?????)
we had lunch today, including hector who doesn’t have a facebook account and after we exchanged stories about facebook, i think he considers himself lucky. robin told me an inspiring story. she is sober since 2000, having overcome everything with the help of God as she knows him and the twelve step program. robin even had trouble describing the transition, more than ten years ago, from a woman addicted to alcohol and drugs and certain she was headed for Hell to that of a woman who is sure of the love of her God. i was awed. not just by her story but by the way her face, her smile, her eyes brighten with the story. she is a brave woman.
it is a story her coworkers are well aware of. while robin has worked at zengeler’s for eleven years, alyce has worked there for thirty two years. it is a good place to work because people stay. alyce, by the way, is the “oldest” child and she is the “cool” aunt in her family, as she is to the zengeler family. she is very generous with the gum and candy that she lets me have whenever i stop in. and she watches out for her coworkers, as she does here when robin starts talking hair which is what all women do eventually when they get together. notice how hector reacts. . .
f2fb friend #12 andrew has put together a grid that makes it possible to visit all my facebook friends outside of the united states in one blow out 21 day trip. i find his proposal intimidating. and intriguing. exciting and scary. i think maybe i should break up the trips a little bit. but under his plan i would actually travel around the world. . . with time to stop in japan. and time to swing into brazil late in the year. on the other hand, the risks are enormous. don’t you think people in india will be completely freaked out by my panic attacks???
i joined rotary because of colvin henderson, father to f2fb friend #25 max henderson. colvin was dying of mesothelioma and he wanted me to join the winnetka northfield rotary club to sort of “take his place”. i’ve taken the responsibility seriously and will be a rotarian for life. at one time, i even served as president of the club.
rotarians take seriously the idea of doing good for others. i’m not a particularly good person on my own but with a club of rotarians i inadvertently do good things. my friend gina di sando (f2fb #69) is part of a committee of rotarians who are hosting an event on april 16 to pack meals to be sent to the citizens of “the dump” in manaus, nicaragua.
in addition to needing volunteers on that day, gina needs to raise money to help pay for the food that will be packed. she’s selling one hundred dollar raffle tickets, with the prize being five thousand dollars. i bought one ticket. if you buy a ticket, i promise to buy a SECOND ticket and you and i will share the proceeds raised. just go to wnrotary.org and look for the kids against hunger program. or contact me either here or on facebook!
sometimes people become better people because of the clubs they join:
our club has been hosting a japanese student named hideki who is from a suburb of tokyo. we have been able to establish that his family is all right. i know our club will do something for the victims of the earthquake. そして当然私達は日本のために祈る
my f2fb friend #12 andrew pearce put together a map of all the places i will travel in the coming year. at least to see the 335 friends i had as of december 31 when i started this project. it’s a lot less imposing when he puts it together. thank you andrew!
however, there are some “lost” friends where we don’t know their location. so andrew put them in the lost lake in tallahassee.
speaking of tallahassee, i have been dragged back into the drama of f2fb #30 my personal father justin leiber. when i went down there he became paranoid that i had disabled his car. he accused me of being a “super conman”. he was rambling and a bit incoherent. a few hours after i left he was involuntarily committed for four days. he is afraid that he will be committed again, against his will. he has asked for my help. i am unsure what i can do.
over the weekend, i hope to see robin and alyce, as well as bonnie bradlee whom i haven’t seen in over thirty years. i will dine chez finnegan and remeet college buddies tim crawford and john finnegan. and i hope to visit the graves of my two best friends. a busy set of travels but i am glad that andrew pearce can keep track of it all. shhh! don’t tell him that i don’t really have to go to burkani faso!
arlynnpresser 