Conversation with My Wife (217)
Thank you, Walter! And Sears Class of 1972!
DEB: Here, put this on. (hands me one of my shirts) I just need to take a couple pictures, then we can get the morning started.
This was Thanksgiving morning, we’d rolled out of bed a few minutes before. I was dressed, but I was wearing my standard morning workout gear — the t-shirt I slept in, my exercise shorts, and my old-old walking shoes.¹ The shirt Deb handed me was a nice blue one.
ME: Okay. (because after 21+ years I know there’s a reason why I’m not getting an explanation beforehand, so there’s no point in asking)
Deb takes me out to our porch, where there is a large plain cardboard box sitting at my place at our table. There’s a card next to it with my name on it. Okay, might be something to do with Thanksgiving. But not anything to do with my birthday, because We Do Not Do Birthday Gifts To Each Other.
Ah, did I not mention it was my birthday? Yeah, I don’t bring that up much. I’m not big on my own birthdays. I have reasons.
DEB: (getting into position with her phone to shoot pictures) Okay, look at me… (shoots) Okay, now open it.
It’s a cake. A HUGE cake. The top says, “Happy Birthday Jack From Joseph Sears Class of 1972.” Ah. This would be Walter’s doing.
Let me explain about Walter. No, let me start with my K-8 grade school, The Joseph Sears School, then we’ll cover Walter.
From kindergarten through eighth grade, I went to the same school, along with about six dozen other kids in my class. This was a big deal, it turned out. I avoided the middle school/junior high horror show that so many others have suffered through; I was surrounded by kids I was used to, and who were used to me. Until I got to high school, I never knew I was weird; so far as my Joseph Sears classmates were concerned, I was just Jack. Awful at sports, mostly shy and quiet (especially around girls), but accepted as me.
Walter started with me in kindergarten. He did all sorts of sports because he enjoyed them, was elected student council president our eighth grade year, got along with everybody (students and teachers), and was just Wally. (Yup, that kind of thing worked for a lot of people.) We kind of lost touch in high school, despite being in the same home room; I blame me, because high school for me was all about keeping my head down and getting through it. He eventually became a lawyer and got into good trouble that way. In 2019 he helped put together a Sears Class of 1972 reunion, and as soon as that was done Walter started to get things rolling for our 50th reunion in 2022.
And then COVID-19 hit the fan. So Walter, bless him, worked to get classmates connected to each other, primarily through recognizing folks on their birthdays and eliciting memories from back in the day.
I mentioned I’m not big on my own birthdays, yes? So I asked Walter to save himself some time and effort and just ignore mine. I mentioned some of my not-happy memories, starting with having a birthday that fell frequently on Thanksgiving, so the last several decades have been things like a candle on a pumpkin pie, if there was anything at all, rather than a birthday cake. I brought up other past incidents as to why my birthdays were mostly things I prefer to forget. Walter seemed undeterred, but as my birthday approached things got quiet, so good, maybe he had something else going on to keep him busy, rather than trying to make this my Best Birthday Ever.
DEB: So Walter contacted me through Karen³ through [your sister], and said he wanted to make sure you finally got a real birthday cake for your birthday. And that it be diabetic-friendly. And be from your classmates at Joseph Sears. So I found a local bakery that specializes in no-sugar-added goods, and ordered a cake, which weighs thirty pounds because it’s carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I couldn’t fit everything Walter wanted on the cake, so there’s a card.
The card says:
For the best birthday ever, Jack! Again you celebrate without us, but you are never alone! We love you. Always. Forever. The Joseph Sears School Class of 1972.
DEB: It was a little hard to get that on a cake. Even to get what it has, I had to go up a size. Walter waxes eloquent.
ME: You know Walter is a lawyer, right?
DEB: That explains a lot. Still, he is VERY sincere and was determined to make this happen for you. So we did! And he asked me to take photos and send them to your Sears classmates, so I need to get those out.
So Deb emailed the photos out, and my classmates started emailing me with best wishes, memories, and some of their own photos from back in the day. Since Deb was the original sender, she’s been getting copied; she gets a beep on her phone, picks it up, goes “Awwww!”, then smiles at me.
DEB: Your classmates think you’re pretty special, honey!
After Thanksgiving dinner we had birthday cake. Much to the surprise of the friend we had over for Thanksgiving (Friendsgiving?) who did not know it was my birthday. (I’m not big on my birthdays. Not sure if you knew that?) We ate too much, but it was delicious. We talked about my days at Sears and what it was like and why this was such a Walter thing, and sent her home long after our usual bedtime.
Best birthday ever, Walter!
¹I have a set of walking shoes that I bought in 2016. They got me around Disney World and Universal when we took one of our California nephews there, and I loved them. By 2019 they were getting a bit tired, so I bought a new pair in anticipation of our 20th anniversary cruise to Alaska, scheduled for May 2020.² Two years later, I bought another pair of walking shoes, since the new (now old) pair is showing wear and the old (now old-old) pair looks like something the costume department came up with to put on the homeless guy character. (We’ve been walking a lot more since we retired.)
²Bumped to May 2021. Re-bumped to May 2022 (fingers crossed).
³Walter’s sister, Sears Class of 1974.
Copyright ©2021 by Jack Herlocker. Steal this, and I’ll report you to Walter. You wouldn’t like that. Walter and my Sears classmates, OTOH, may copy and use this as they wish.
