Jim is taking an independent study class and had to meet with his professor this past Friday evening. I had left work early with an allergy attack, but took some medicine and was feeling well enough to go along with him. The professor’s office was near Cleveland heights and I waited in the lobby with a book while Jim had his meeting.<\/p>\n
I was getting a little hungry and suggested Mellow Mushroom when he was done. Jim, having seen me when I’m “hangry” suggested Legacy Village since it was closer. We decided on the California Pizza Kitchen – unless it was busy.<\/p>\n
The rainy weather had scared off the crowds and the restaurant wasn’t busy at all. We got seated right away and I had a view of the kitchen.<\/p>\n
As we were looking over the menus, I thought I recognized someone working in the kitchen, but they were gone before I could be sure.<\/p>\n
The waiter took our order and left. I saw the familiar person again a little later and stopped our waiter as he was going past.<\/p>\n
“Is Larry Barnett working in the kitchen this evening?”<\/p>\n
“Yes, he is – would you like me to…” the server replied and I interrupted to explain so he wouldn’t think there was a problem.<\/p>\n
“He was my room-mate about a hundred years ago,”<\/p>\n
The waiter laughed and headed back to the kitchen.<\/p>\n
I overheard him talking to someone behind the counter, heard “one hundred years”, heard a laugh – and then Larry comes out of the kitchen with a huge grin on his face.<\/p>\n
I stood up as he approached and asked, “What up, fool?” with a matching grin.<\/p>\n
We shared a big hug, introduced Jim, and starting talking.<\/p>\n
And though we hadn’t parted on exactly good terms and it had years and years since I’d seen him, we fell right back into where we had been. The same jokes, the same speech patterns – just like old times.<\/p>\n
Our pizza arrived and Larry shook his head. “Should have known – pepperoni”<\/p>\n
I’m a creature of habit.<\/p>\n
He gave me his number to put in my phone – surprised that I not only had a cell phone, but that I texted too. He laughed when he saw that I put it under Batman. \u00a0Another old joke.<\/p>\n
He headed back to the kitchen and we ate our meal. When we were done, the waiter came over and told us that Larry had taken care of the bill.<\/p>\n
When he stopped by, I thanked him and reminded him of when I had brought my family into a restaurant where he worked and he paid for all the meals – except my sister’s since she was wearing an OSU shirt.<\/p>\n
“She was always mean to me,” he said, “And this is me we’re talking about,”<\/p>\n
We promised to contact each other and get together to catch up. I’m going to text him and we’ll grab a bite to eat one of these days.<\/p>\n
What a strange series of coincidences and timing that made that this unexpected reunion work out.<\/p>\n
I told Jim I was going to blog the hell out of that and found myself grinning all the way home – like I’d just found a treasure again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jim is taking an independent study class and had to meet with his professor this past Friday evening. I had left work early with an allergy attack, but took some medicine and was feeling well enough to go along with him. The professor’s office was near Cleveland heights and I waited in the lobby with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2219,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions\/2219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}