Archive for April 14th, 2009

You’re welcome.

I spent an hour on a line OF SIX PEOPLE in my tiny fart of a local post office. My favorite part was when the oddly-dreadlocked employee left for a few minutes. He was the only person working at the time. A Republican on the line muttered something about how “Obama wants these idiots to run healthcare?” and I wanted to point out to him that Obama is not interested in shifting postal employees into the medical field and I also wanted to feed him his package (whatever that means to you, that’s what I meant), but I just bit my lip and took solace in the fact that at least one of his kids is almost definitely gay.

And why did I stand on line for so long? To send in my (our) taxes! Hooray! Connecticut owes us money! We owe Oregon money! We owe New York money! The feds owe us money! And when the dust settles we’ll have a barely four-figure refund that we can use for (almost) half a month’s rent.

Whither that garbage bag full of money? Maybe we’ll win the Mega Millions tonight.

No, we WILL win the MegaMillions tonight.

Got a remarkably unexpected phone call from a very old friend. We lost touch many years ago and he called to apologize and see if we could meet up for drinks. The Jed from six years ago would have told him to go fuck himself (if he didn’t just immediately hang up). But Teresa has helped me to be less angry and more forgiving. And after the last few weeks, I’ve gotten a sense of what’s truly important in life. Grudges over things that happened almost 20 years ago… meh. If we had bumped into each other on the street and he apologized, it might have felt like he felt obligated to apologize. But he found this blog and my phone number and reached out. He didn’t have to; he wanted to.

At the time, his shutting me out of his life crushed me. I couldn’t understand how someone that close to me could do that to me, especially when I really needed my friends. But I understood why he (and others) assumed the worst and cut me out. It hurt, but it’s a big world and I’m a big boy.

I moved on with my life. Skidmore, Chicago, Manhattan, Portland and now Brooklyn. I’ve grown both up (though I’m still far from a grown-up) and a little wiser. And I’ll always have room in my life for more friends.

Except on Facebook’s Mafia Wars. The limit there is 501. But I’ve stalled at 7. Which is why my casinos keep getting robbed.

What was I saying again? Oh, right.

Welcome back, Mick. I just listened to Uninspired on YouTube. I like. Is that you on vocals? I remember your singing voice being much more feminine…

OK. Now we’re even.

(if the rest of you want to feel like a part of this conversation, you can hear my new old friend’s band – NOBA – by clicking play below)