The Day and Night I Tried To Be a Grown Up – Part One
I went on a business trip to Minneapolis with Len, my boss. He was one of the partners in the CPA firm I worked for right out of college. In fact, I was only one month into the job, and two months out of college when we went on this trip. I was still in “real world” denial. This was my first business trip.
When we met at the airport, Len asked if I had lunch yet, which I didn’t, and since we had time, he suggested we have lunch at one of the restaurants in the terminal. We each got a steak sandwich.
Len and I had nearly nothing in common. We were both Caucasian males, and from there, the differences branched dramatically. He was in his fifties which, to me at the time, was pretty old. He loved elevator music on his office radio all day, he loved wearing suits even when he didn’t have to, and his idea of a wild day at the office for employee morale was showing us slides of his trip to Hilton Head.
And he was rich. Filthy rich. He made a lot of money from the partnership. When his father passed away five years earlier, he left Len half a fortune. When his mother died three years after that, he got the other half. He bought his new Mercedes Benz W123 luxury sedan on a whim when he passed the dealership, and paid the full price with his checkbook. He also loved to tell people that.
As we ate our steak sandwich, Len kept talking as I was trying to watch the White Sox highlights on the TV behind the bar. “Mark, as far as airport food goes, this steak sandwich is good. Not great, not bad, not even average. Yes, I would say it’s good, and I would bet that 9 out of 10 people would agree that it’s a GOOD sandwich.”
“Um… Yeah Len, I’d say it’s a GOOD sandwich.”
“See what I mean?” He enjoyed his next bite proudly.
“Mark, have you ever had the Prime Rib at the Winnetka Yacht Club?”
When I looked at his face, I was surprised to see he wasn’t kidding.
“You know, Len, I don’t think so.” I realized he grew up going to places like yacht clubs while, for my siblings and me, the great treat was going to White Castle in Blue Island on Sunday afternoons. I considered asking him, with the same tone as his, if he has ever had Ham and Swiss at Arby’s, but I couldn’t even imagine him laughing at a comment that wasn’t his.
We got on the plane, and our seats were together. I tried to look out the window and enjoy looking at Wisconsin, while Len told me about the great mistake he made two years ago. He booked a trip to Colorado, a group trip where you explore old silver mining trails throughout The Rockies. The passenger truck that took the group up these very rugged roads had wooden seats with seatbelts. Len underwent hemorrhoid surgery less than three weeks before that trip, thinking that this was enough time to heal. It wasn’t. He told me many details about the pain and the practical difficulties of taking this trip much too soon.
All at the same time, I wanted to laugh, to throw up, to jump out of the plane, and/or to throw Len out of the plane. But mostly, I thought about how the people in the seats behind us would be able to tell their friends for weeks about the weirdo in front of them on their flight to Minneapolis.
<<< Part 2 later this week >>>
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Reach me at thinwizzyfit@gmail.com, and feel welcome to link up with me through Facebook (Mark Wierzbinski).
Mark,
You are such a good story teller!