LY #59 Buddies

Laurence Olivier Henry 5

I tipped a glass of wine this evening with an old friend and his daughter.  He was the man who made sure all the paperwork was done and the appropriate letters written for my promotion to full professor.   I hadn't spent so much time with him for years.  It was lovely.  Before he retired we'd often tippled together, as we were two of the "usual suspects" when it came to party attendance in the Humanities Department.

When he was hired at COCC, a couple of years after I was, he scared me a bit with his intense and purposefully provocative conservatism.  He came to English Literature from a profession known for its toughness, traditions and orthodoxy.   On the surface, I would have seemed completely different.  I performed myself as a left leaning, post-Marxist liberal.  But as it turned out, we shared some core values:  honesty, collegial support and a love for performance, our own and that of others.

My experience with him taught me about the always-surprising way life continually contests and capsizes all of my pre-programmed points of view.

 It was nice to spend time with him tonight.  I've missed him since he semi-retired.