The Welcome Guest
Today marks the end of a long drought – a chain of endless days will finally break. Greg Dillwine and his family is stepping off a plane in Nashville and I’ll be there to greet him. Until I met Melissa, Greg was the almost singular definition of “friend.” Time and distance have been useless against our common traits: mild pessimism, milder pragmatism, and a dangerously weak sense of.humor. Heck, we even have the same genetic back ground – German/Bohemian.
We’ve been “co-conspirators” for almost three decades. Since our fledgling days in one of Dickinson’s small private schools through the very latest DodoEgg.com post, Greg and I have always been Person #1 and Redundant #2. We sometimes switch roles to no great effect. Much of our growing up together was used to perfect two separate art forms – amusing only ourselves and soaking our romantic ineptitude in high fructose corn syrup.
Here’s a good example…We’re cruising Villard Street hoping a carload of pretty girls would wave us down. We would have been more likely to see a herd of buffalo fly by. Greg takes a long look at his Arizona fruit punch (he’s driving) and says, “You know, once I bought an Arizona with low fructose corn syrup. I took it back.” We laughed and cranked up the Hot Pink Turtles.
Our courage with the opposite gender had the strength of eggshells. I would stress sweat sitting in the same row as a girl I found attractive. We tried breaking this vice with weight lifting and inflated titles. Since we couldn’t speak to girls directly we’d let our pectorals do the talking. I’ve written about the Gorgeous Hunks Club in previous posts like this one and this one. Unfortunately, the Club’s clout extended only to Greg’s front door. (Greg’s mom and older sisters unanimously thought we were indeed hunks.)
Greg’s father could have helped but didn’t. Instead of teaching us the devious tactics he used to snare Mrs. D he would take us fishing. We averaged one catch per day and almost 6,000 stories on how the fishing used to be much better. Since we were in a camper miles from civilization, we had no choice but listen. (Greg’s dad also skipped buying real toys. Instead of providing cool toy guns he gave us chicken wire and plaster telling us to make our own guns. He owned several apartment complexes and needed to patch a lot of holes. The guns were cool…I guess.)
It took years before my parents bought our family a Nintendo and Greg’s family only watched one station. (I’m not kidding. Huge TV…satellite dish…VHS…and ONE station allowed!) With such a dearth of entertainment, we spent most of our time swimming at the local pool (Swam there for years – surrounded by girls and I never remember speaking to one.), assembling puppet shows (early years), and constructing movies with deodorant sticks as the characters (college years and no we were not on anything).
One occasion Greg and I were allowed to prepare supper at the Dillwine residence. We were given five pounds of ground beef and told to make hamburgers. “Hey Greg….onion, onion powder, and I’m out of ideas. (digging through the cupboard and pulling out the food coloring). Wait, what about coloring the burgers?! Food coloring doesn’t effect the taste right?”
”No,” Greg replies, “I think green might be funny.”
The burgers were a flop and Mr. Dillwine vowed that Greg and I would eat every last burger. He eventually relented when it was decided there was no way to tell whether the burgers had gone bad or not. Safety first!
Greg and I eventually DID find interested females. We have families now and what seem like a million other pursuits. He lives in Fargo and I live near Nashville. When I pick him up in a few hours, that fact, finally, won’t matter.
Note: Greg was snowed in and caught in the Chicago airport. So….never mind.
March 28th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
Good times.