Just like a Slattery

Tonight my friend Bruce posted some pictures from college. I am reminded of how much I loved my boys, and how much I miss them.

I present this for your Sunday evening.

Tonight at dinner, a group of three gentlemen sat catercorner to my friend and me at the bar.

We struck up a conversation with them in which I asked the one closest to me “which famous person are you?”

He laughed and said, “I wish,” and the five of us moved on to other things, like what they should order (definitely some grits).

We talked about Atlanta, and about that night at Tiffany when I ended up shopping with the basketball player who everybody else in the store recognized but I didn’t (it was a Chicago Bull looking for a Christmas present his mother and a girl who was a friend of his).

So their dinner came and they did, indeed, love the grits.

And my dinner came and I insisted he try my Brussels sprouts, which he did.

And then he left and we figured out it was Dri Archer.

Nice guy. I hope he wins.

Today I called to order more contacts. The conversation was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, it was just a means to an end.

After my business was concluded, just before I hung up, I inexplicably said, “I love you” to the gentleman on the phone.

There was a pregnant pause and then we both said, “Uh, bye.”

Now I want somebody to go get my contacts for me.

This is not my first time at the Awkward Rodeo.

I once almost kissed my eye doctor. Who I then never saw again.

I was told to write about friendship, and how with some friends, you can go years without seeing them and then when you do again it just continues in a nice way.

My whole life is like a TV show and absences are like commercials, because I have a ridiculous memory and generally pick back up where we left off.

That sounds great, doesn’t it? Only I’m usually the only one who remembers what we were talking about standing outside the dining hall in 1987, that day it was supposed to snow but it didn’t and we were all wearing rubber boots for nothing after all, so what I say doesn’t make any sense to anybody but me.

So imagine my shock when I hadn’t seen my friend Sheila for something like 28 years and I was sitting in her kitchen and out of nowhere I said, “Did you ever find that peacoat?” and she, without even looking up said, “No! I did not!”

Because that practically never happens to me.

I’m telling you all that to tell you this: I am having lunch with my friend Julie on Monday. I haven’t seen her in thirty years. We decided to come as we are and it’ll all be okay, since losing weight and getting lower cholesterol between now and then is too much of a hassle.

I’ve been giving piling on a good bit of thought lately, in light of Eddie Murphy declining to skewer Bill Cosby on SNL 40. I’m aware of what Cosby did (or allegedly did, though I’m pretty sure the alleged train has left the alleged station). 

Norm Macdonald said he didn’t do it because he wouldn’t kick a man when he was down. There have been a lot of comments denigrating Murphy for not doing it, and I just don’t agree. I don’t know why he didn’t do it and I don’t really care, but I’m glad he didn’t.

I grow weary of piling on, throwing things up in people’s faces. It might be because I think everyone will get theirs (I do believe that, incidentally) without the rest of us pushing it along. It just all seems so much like beating a dead horse. 

According to the guy at the Washington Post, Murphy didn’t do it because it just wasn’t funny. I can’t speak to that. I think Eddie Murphy can make anything funny. But you know, maybe he wanted to do Buckwheat or Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood because those are known to be funny.  

Generally speaking, I don’t ever think piling on is funny. The reality is that the person being piled on could rescue a burning bus full of nuns and orphans and they’d still be despicable.