Each day I get a big chef salad from the cafeteria. They hook the salad up, making it special for me without pork. But they always give me either french or ranch dressing, when I like Italian. So I just keep a bottle of Italian dressing on me, so as not to be too much of a diva. Well, my salad came, and I had just run out of dressing. I go through my stash, and I have a buttload of french dressing packets, but no little Italian packs. I’ll get this dealt with. I text Jareau, who was dropping by and ask if I can make a last minute request for some Italian dressing, and a bag of baby spinach. I also love baby spinach. Don’t need anything in it, I’ll have no problem putting some italian dressing in the bag and eating the whole bag. J confirms that he can bring it. Problem solved.
At 5pm I get a text that they aren’t going to be able to make it. What a bummer. I’m thinking
“Guess I will just get used to French dressing.” Acceptance.
At 6pm we are making our walk to The Yard, and the hospital is pretty much shut down, especially in the darkest cornet of the rehabilitation building, where the RCU is. The group is walking out of a side door, and as I pass the main door, which is locked, I see someone standing outside of the (wrong) elevator, looking confused. I look at him. He looks at me through the locked doorway. The staff asks if I know him.
“Well yeah, but I haven’t seen him since…yeah, I know him”
So they let him in. Well, they let him out. It’s Duane Kingston, holding a grocery bag. Duane?! I haven’t seen this cat since…maybe the DC Congress, and he’s like
“Wut up main! I brought you some chocolate!”
I was excited to see Duane. Though he could have called. I wasn’t as excited for the chocolate. I was also a bit confused.
“I’m just messing with you, but Jareau told me that you needed something.”
And he pulls out a bag of spinach and some Italian dressing.
“I couldn’t find the extra garlic one, so I got…zesty”
It’s not easy to say the word “zesty” to another dude.
I love my friends. Had Duane been a minute earlier or a minute later he would not have been seen. He might have found the RCU, but he would be told that we’d be back in an hour. Instead he was right there at the right time, without my phone number, since the last time he had it was about 7 years ago.
Then we broke bread over potato chips and cheetos, getting to catch up on his recent move to Miami. Like a week ago. I did tell him to hit me up when he got here.
That chef salad never had a chance. It had been changed from blasé french to a NY-Trini zesty.
This is a crazy ride. I’d have it no other way.
sGB