ESSAY OF HOPE PARTS 1 & 2 PUT TOGETHER FOR SHARING
(in response to popular demand)
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.
Despite my trepidation, I answered the phone.
And it was my youthful big city journalism era nemesis -- the TV-radio critic.
And he wasn't
snotty at all.
He was warm,
kind, like a long lost brother...or college roommate to reconnect with.
We never were close at all, obviously.
But suddenly, two
men in their 50s, still married to their wonderful wives, were bonded like we had
been best friends for ages.
The critic was
certainly apologetic, but the call wasn't about that at all.
It was about men,
learning to care, learning to prioritize, learning to grow beyond youthful
pettiness.
We ended up
talking about wars and peace. Betrayals and redemption. Of triumphs and
tragedies experienced by mutual friends from the newspaper we crossed paths at
-- the Columbus Dispatch.
We are both busy
people. He's a leading sports columnist, a brilliant and passionate writer.
I work in marketing communications for urban design and town planning -- an outgrowth of the
beat I settled into after leaving the late night and work in a fishbowl life of an arts critic back.
But we talked for nearly an hour. I didn't want to hang up the phone.
Movies have been
based on less heartwarming events, adapted from stories less ironic and amazing
than the long and winding road that led to our mobile phone bonding session.
We became
Facebook friends. Maybe that's corny, but it is the format of modern
communication.
I took great joy when he liked or commented on some aspect of my life.
I shared some of
his insightful posts -- on sports and life -- with my friends.
We both weathered
the 2016 presidential election (and were not happy with the results).
We shared stories
of diversity, what both of us still believe is the backbone of America.
Now, bigotry, misogyny,
race baiting, hatred, prejudice, anti-Semitism, outright attacks on peaceful practitioners
of the Muslim faith and mockery dehumanizing people with disabilities is
embraced by the elected leader of the free world.
It
seems, in the
same month as the election, very appropriate to give thanks for the
opportunity to get to know...to really know...the true big heart and
essence of my new friend.
I thought long
and hard about keeping his identity anonymous in this essay.....at least to all
but fellow alums of the Dispatch newspaper or those obsessed enough to look up
who was the TV-Radio critic in the late 1980s there.
But I'm going to
share the name, because I have great admiration, respect and yes, I'll say it,
even love for the person who was big enough to read my email, take stock in
what I said and reach out to me with a warmth and kindness that seems so rare
in these days of anger, bile and bellicose online posts.
My
"new" friend is David Jones.
He’s an acclaimed
columnist for PennLive.com
He's married to
the former Ana Al-Khouri.
They have a
family.
David is one of
the good guys.
Big hearted.
Honest and open.
For the bond we
created about a year ago -- and the darn near Hollywood feel good story forged
from the bizarre and initially rocky road that brought us together -- I am
thankful for.
This is my
Thanksgiving story.
Thank you David.
May you and your family feel the same warmth, love and joy that I am feeling as
I share this story.
Happy Thanskgiving
