It's Not Easy Being Me - But I'm the best man for the job!

Each of us has gifts. John Lennon had, and I have the gifts of misery and sarcasm. Misery indeed loves company. John had Ringo. I have Evan.

What in the world am I talking about? A great deal of the inspiration for John’s songs was a result of spending time with Ringo. In ordinary conversation, Ringo, would say extraordinary things. Expressions such as “hard day’s night,” and, “eight days a week” were pure Ringo. These things just flowed from his lips in the middle of the monotony of a day in the life because “tomorrow never knows.”

My relationship with my friend Evan has all of the same attributes. Simply amazing things come out of his mouth without any strain or forced effort. We are members of the mutual admiration society but the difference is like comparing the design of German and Japanese automobiles. I am like the German engineers. I set out to design an ashtray and although the result will be a magnificent achievement in precision it will require twenty-six pieces and seven screws to assemble. Meanwhile, the Japanese designer assembles most of the interior with eight fewer pieces and only four screws. That is my relationship with Evan. I will sweat the details and set the tolerances to plus or minus 0.00003 of a millimeter, and include a complete ISO 9000 compliant CAD drawing package and a finite element analysis model before I even present my idea to him and he will glance at it and ask, ”Why don’t you just use a stick and a rubber band?”

My reply is of course, “Because that would be simple and work and wouldn’t be any fun, Damn it, Evan!!!”

[*sigh*]

Anyway, having Evan around simplifies a whole bunch of my convoluted approach to thinking and living. Today’s T-Shirt message is pure Evan. That is an original Evan quote, “It’s not easy being ME but I’m the best man for the job.” It’s so deep yet so simple. That’s his eloquent solution to my complex problems. When we first met he described me to others as a simple-minded genius. That sounds more like an insult than a compliment but he meant that I tunneled right down to the core of things, identified the problem, and suggested the optimum solution. What happened to that guy? Well, I think a big part of it is that I am no longer among those like Evan that just by being around – turn things around. I am not forgetting my friends locally, Randy and Steve, in particular, by any means. They have literally fed me and housed me and kept me sane the past five years. But there is a symbiotic relationship with Evan that just happened. Where Randy and Steve are real friends that tell me when I’m being stupid I think only Evan comprehends my stupidity. Every work day on his drive home I get a phone call and forty-five minutes of pure Evan. He lives 1900 miles away but makes it a point to check up on me. When he has no answers listening is enough. When he speaks there is always an answer worth my listening. I swear he has cameras and microphones inside my head.

Now, I look back quite a lot in these posts. I do so because I believe that when you’ve lost your way it is better to retrace your steps until you get your bearings rather than fumble around. Evan always points true East, where I grew up. Randy and Steve point true Southwest, where I live, now. When you are searching for something lost you should start where you are certain that you saw it last, right? The things I’m not finding inside myself any longer are back East.

Friendship, just as other marks of character, is forged and tested through adversity. My recent season of testing has been continuous and intense for five years. That produces a different temper than a cycle of heating and cooling as I experienced growing up. Evan shared those cycles with me and we were forever fused together as an alloy of allies. We met in high school . . . in detention. What better crucible to fire a friendship?! Our being found there reflected our personalities. I was being punished for defiance. He was being detained for ingenuity. Our common bond was the recognition of the other’s achievement.

I had been summoned to the head of the English department and informed that I demonstrated a real talent for writing. However, she decided that the proper way to inspire and motivate my efforts was to show me the work of a (wait for it) female student whose work was nearly as unique as mine but not as developed. Her challenge to me was that the other student would receive a higher grade than mine so that I would apply myself with even more fervor to raise the bar. I informed her that negative reinforcement would yield negative results and that if I were not given the grade I deserved I would not write another assignment the remainder of the year. She balked at what she considered an idol threat and informed me such an action would land me in detention and that I would fail the class. She did not raise the grade and I did not write. I languished in detention for the remainder of the school year without submitting another work. She awarded me an “A” for the class and I chastised her that both of us were cheated out of my developing skill under her tutelage due to her ridiculous posturing. Yes. I am still resentful.

Evan made far more noise than I. It so happened that one day as classes began a deep, thunderous BOOM reverberated through the halls of our school. The experience had all of the earmarks of an explosion. The floors shook and the assembled mass held its collective breath until all seemed good. As fate would have it that was the same day I defied my English teacher. On the third floor of our well equipped and very new school was a fantastic art studio. The tables in that room were oak with two inch thick, solid slab slate tops. Each table sat ten students; very large tables, indeed. Evan’s home room was assigned to that art room. Three days earlier while fidgeting with one of the table legs he had noticed that whoever had assembled the furniture did not tighten the fasteners. He was able to completely remove the bolts. By the fourth morning he had managed to work from leg to leg until all four corners were free of fixed hardware. The table remained together by delicate balance and its own undisturbed weight. When the first period teacher huffed in and tossed her stack of bookwork on the empty table it collapsed and the several hundred pound table top dropped like . . . well, like a rock, oddly enough. Now you know the source of the explosive boom.

Rather than learn any valuable lessons from our experiences we instead praised each other for our noble feats and became fast friends. With so many interesting adventures after that it is best to stop the account. What is remarkable is that having been Best Man for each other’s weddings and after thirty years the bond has never weakened and seems that it never will. To have experienced that once is a gift but to have experienced as many times as I have is a miracle. So, in tribute to Evan and to Randy and Steve I would like to complicate the T-Shirt slogan as only I can and claim that,” It’s Not Easy Being Me But My Friends Make Be The Best Man For The Job.”

Treasure your true friends and make sure they know that you do.