A TRUE THANKSGIVING STORY

PART 1

What I am thankful for this year:

Friendship, kindness, understanding, compassion, making amends.

I have thought about sharing this story for ages.

But the time seems right.

Bear with me.

More than a quarter century ago, I made the leap from obscure editorial assistant, fresh out of journalism school kid, to full-time pop music critic at a major newspaper.

I replaced the friend of the paper's TV & radio critic.

I was talented, but was very young, not very confident, not from the city I was working in and maybe overly sensitive.

The TV-radio guy was very talented, darn near as young as me, very confident, from the city the major newspaper was located in and very brash at the time.

He threw me more than a few digs, even though I barely knew him...and ironically, had a working friendship with his new bride -- because we both toiled in the same suburban bureau for the big paper.

I ended up moving on from the pop music critic life and stuck with the paper in beats more suited for my ability and married life as a caregiver to a wonderful wife who uses a wheelchair for mobility.

The more polished TV-Radio critic moved to another City awhile after a very public and ugly incident involving crude radio personalities and out of bounds comments they made about his wife.

Fast forward 25 years and I'm in a blue period, getting over the death of my father - a 40-year newspaperman in the Ohio town I grew up in -- and feeling down over a bout of pain my wife was going through long after a major surgery.

I thought about my old paper and the grudge I held against the brash critic that threw his muttered digs at me in the newsroom hallways.

I found his contact info online and vented....and vented...and vented.

I told him how unkind his cuts were....and really went so far off the deep end that I said nasty things about him (only I was now around age 50 and should have been able to maturely share without stooping to that low level.)

I pushed the send button and felt there was a 99% chance that I had written the note only for my own therapeutic reasons. The person I emailed to would either never reply or zap back a terse "get over it, whiny jackass" email.

A couple days passed...I re-immersed in life and....and the phone rang while I was at a client’s office.

I almost ignored it, since it was an unfamiliar number on my cell -- most likely a telemarketer ignoring the do not call list.

(PART 2 TOMORROW, ON THANKSGIVING DAY)