Buffet
I have been intending to write the last two nights, but I decided I could no longer ignore the dramatic baseball postseason that has been unfolding. I needed some away time after the Twins' disappointing loss to the Yankees, but I'm engaged again. Right now I'm listening to the Yankees/Sox game. Are the Sox really going to pull Lowe after six innings?
So, ideas have been piling up for a couple days now. None have had much time to germinate, and now my parents are arriving tomorrow for the weekend, so I figure I'll throw everything out on the page and go the less is more route.
I suppose as long as we're talking Yankees/Sox, I'll say that I'm rooting hard for the Yankees to lose, but hoping that whoever the National League representative is prolongs the agony of Red Sox fans for yet another year. It's just good theatre.
Jane, Interceptor!
Jane is volunteering at the Kerry appearance tomorrow outside the Metrodome. She was required to attend two training sessions, one tonight and the other tomorrow. Her job is called "Interceptor". She works in a team of five, and there are perhaps 30 Interceptor teams working the rally. Her team's mission: Spot disruptive anti-Kerry elements, surround them, and minimize their presence. If somebody holds up a Bush sign, Jane's group (Let's call them "Delta Force") surrounds the perpetrator and holds up signs of it's own. If someone is yelling "I Love Bush!", Jane's group establishes an impromptu theatre-in-the-round around the rowdy and performs "Death of a Salesman".
I'll be damned. The Red Sox really are brining in Pedro. Why? Imagine the absolute, most painful way for the Red Sox to lose to the Yankees this year. Doesn't bringing in Pedro with a supposedly unsurmountable lead in Game 7 only to see him lose it seem like the beginning of a nightmare? Bernie just hit a double, Yankees down 8-2.
OK, back to Jane. So she's one of these people I've been reading about at the conventions. Now, I don't want to sound naive, but I really only thought that kind of thing happened at the GOP convention. Of course, we know it doesn't happen at Bush's stump speeches, because they weed those jokers out with the loyalty oath and the swearin' on the Bible and all that.
Hmm. Yankees down 8-3, Olerud pinch-hitting.
And don't get me wrong. Jane's job isn't to roust these people or hassle them. Their job is to find someone determined to annoy the people around them, and then go be the people around that person and not get annoyed. I'm not sure I could hold that job, personally. I could see myself running into some jackass talking about Swift Boats, and then I might pop off or pull a shiv on them. Kerry doesn't need that kind of pub.
Still, there's no way to get around it: my wife is a political goon.
My Friend, in the Abyss
I had about a thousand words written on this, but it was too long. It wasn't that a thousand was too much; I was letting too much come out, and too much of it was in conflict. Which figures, because that's how I have been feeling about one of my best childhood friends who has been struggling.
He's been struggling with a meth addiction, and struggling to get out of what seems to be a substantial meth distribution operation. I know this because my parents have the misfortune of living next door to the distribution center, a problem now for over 10 years. My friend never spent much time with the people next door, but when he showed up next door earlier this summer it was bad news.
My friend and I kept in sporadic contact over the years, usually long enough to catch up on our kids and then get into yet another argument about God. It's hard to keep much of a long-distance dialoge going when one party insists on telling the other that they have condemend their children to a fiery hell. But then sixth months later that same guy lecturing me about life has lost his job and left his family to move and take meth.
It's hard. I don't have any real contact or pull with him, but there was a third member of our childhood triumvirate who does. (We'll call him "Tex".) When Tex went back to Kansas this summer, my friend with the meth problem (We'll call him "Mr. President", since he was in fact our Senior Class President) asked Tex if he could go back to Texas with him for 30 days. Like, that weekend. He had to get out and he had to do it immediately or his wife was going to leave him and he would really fall into the abyss if that happened.
Tex has a family back home, including a four year-old boy and an eight year-old girl. You know what Tex said? He said, "O.K." He laid down some rules, of course, but El Presidente and Tex loaded up in the car that weekend and headed back. He got in a car and drove to Texas on a day's notice because otherwise he was going to lose everything. I don't know where he would have gone if he couldn't go to Texas, but he never had to figure that out, because Tex said, "O.K."
I couldn't have done what Tex did. At least I don't think I could have. It's hard to know how I would react if I was there with the man, face to face. I can be breathtakingly selfish, but I've never had someone ask me to help save their life. Perhaps I would surprise myself. But you know what? He didn't ask me. He asked Tex. Maybe it was because Tex was there and I wasn't. But I've been thinking a lot about the fact that maybe Mr. President already knew what my answer was going to be. And he knew Tex's answer would be different.
Things ended up going well in Texas. The President is an affable guy and has many great qualities, for a Jesus Freak/Meth dealer. He stayed clean and read a lot. I called him shortly after he arrived with Tex. We talked about his struggle. He had always lived close to the edge with chemicals and various types of danger, but something happened in his life last spring that put him on tilt. I still don't know what it was. More than anything, he sounded lucid. Realistic. Tired.
It was good to talk to him, but it was also hard. It's strange talking to a friend, when both of you know that you weren't quite willing to go all the way for them. Maybe he didn't feel that, but I did. I've been struggling with it. He was my first friend in kindergarten. I have known for a long time that we were never going to be close again, but that didn't matter to me. I like to think the President, Tex and me saw a certain part and time of the world in a way that nobody else did. The fact it was the '70s and '80s in a dying Topeka neighborhood called Oakland never mattered. You only grow up once, and you only have so many true childhood friends.
It was a long time ago. The years have taken us many places, and we are ever-changing. Unfortunately, some changes don't happen when they should. I got a call from my mom after the President returned to Topeka, just a couple weeks ago. Tex and I hadn't talked to him in a couple months and had no way to know whether he was making it. My mom's call wasn't the news we wanted; the President was next door, constantly. In and out. Moving product again, likely using product.
Tex and I talked. We were dismayed, but not shocked. It's a long road, and addiction and bad economic circumstances tend to derail a lot of sobriety drives. Tex figured we had done what we could; we would just have to wait and see where he landed.
But I didn't do all I could do. I could try to reach him, let him know (and his wife know, if she doesn't already) that I know he's using and dealing and I'm gonna come down there and get his ass straight. Or maybe I could call him, let him know what I know, and offer my home to him for another 30 days.
But it's not going to happen. I don't trust him, and I don't trust the drugs he's struggling with. I hope for him, but I don't have much hope for him. I looked at one of my two great childhood friends in need and realized the boundary of my friendship with him prevented me from giving him what he needed. I think about him when I walk my dog at night. I wonder where he is, what his teenage kids know about his life. I hurt for my friend, and then I feel guilt and shame for the fact that I won't extend myself to help him.
Red Sox win! But it's all just prelude to the gut punch Red Sox fans will get in the World Series.
The Big Job
Linus has jobs now. We wrote up a chart for him with all the appropriate columns (Feed Pets, Clean Up, Mow Lawn). The deal is, he does his jobs, then he gets paid a $2 allowance each Saturday. The nice thing is that I don't think he cares as much about the money as he does just having responsibility. He loves it and has been volunteering for more jobs each week.
I was splitting logs under Linus' watchful eye yesterday when he asked me to stop. He walked over and sat down beside me, then asked with a serious voice, "How old were you when you got that job?"
I didn't know what he was talking about. "What job?"
He pointed at the ax. "This job. This chopping wood job. How old were you when you got it?" I thought about it and told him I was 35 when I got the wood-chopping job, because I had never had wood to chop before then. He said, "Do I have to wait till I'm 35 before I can have this job?"
"No," I said. "You can have this job when you are able to use the ax, sledgehammer and Wood Grenade safely." He picked up each of the tools and felt their heft. "Why are they so heavy?"
I picked up the sledgehammer and pointed at the metal head. "Well, this is a special kind of metal that's very dense and heavy, and it needs to be that way because..." I looked behind me to see if he was watching, and found that he was in another part of the yard trying to hit our birdfeeder with his football.
All in a day's work.
11:25:24 PM 
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