Stand Up Guy

I was watching a show on TV yesterday and something reminded me of an old friend named Gary. Just one of those guys who walks along with you on the path of life for a while and then gets off the path and is never seen nor heard from again. But thinking of Gary made me laugh.

It had all the potential of an awkward situation. I was working as an evening supervisor at a nationwide call center, and when all the managers left I was the guy in charge.

This wasn't a regular company, with happiness and smiles and forgiveness--this was an evil empire of strenuous rules, petty fiefdoms defended to the death, people fired over rumors and hearsay, and an out-of-control, autocratic Office Manager who was harsh, vindictive and a little bit crazy, even for a six-foot tall woman from Chicago. In short, it was pretty much like every other office out there.

Gary was the Office Manager's son, and was nearly exactly my age--We must have been around twenty-three. His mother was very overprotective even though he had been away for college for a couple of years. She was pretty shameless about it, so I dreaded having to supervise him because there were lots of rules and if I enforced them all, I would be a real hard-ass. If I let them go, which we often did, then I'm breaking the rules in front of the boss' son.

As a supervisor, I was supposed to distribute work and keep general order. So I was a little irritated when, after working on my shift for about a week, I walked around the corner and spotted Gary with his feet propped up on a short table. You see, the company had purchased a number of small tables so operators wouldn't put their drink next to the computer workstation--in case something spilled (ie. they treated the employees like 5-year-old kids). Not only did he have his feet propped up, but he also was reclining almost horizontally with his head thrown back, looking at the ceiling while he talked to the customer.

I walked up to him and said, very quietly,"Hey, man--this isn't your living room..."

He looked up at me with saucer-like eyes, shocked that I would say anything--actually, a little wounded.

I continued, "Yes, I know who your mom is, too...but she's not here right now."

He burst into immediate, genuine laughter, looked down, and shook his head from side to side in surrender. I would learn that that was just the kind of guy Gary was--his strongest reflex tendency was to laugh at everything. We hit it off immediately.

This was back in 1993, and during that year, Dallas acquired the Dallas Stars professional hockey team. Before that, the only time we could catch ice hockey was on TV during the Olympics, but it was a complete and utter mystery as to what was the point of the whole thing. In fact, the newspaper had to create a special section where they would list the rules of the game so the fans could understand what in the hell was going on.

Being from Chicago, Gary was a huge fan of hockey, so he would organize about 8 of us together to go--back then, the tickets were very cheap because the game hadn't caught on yet in this area. We found ourselves getting great seats, and we had so much fun--I still have the tickets from going to seven games the first year--people would even ask us when we were coming back, because we would jump around and high-five everyone around us when things went well.

Gary went back to college, but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. He moved back, mid-year, announcing that he had dropped out of college to be a stand-up comedian. He performed at the local comedy club...right up until they told him to stop coming back. He told me that he was bombing one night and just decided to start cursing continuously because that seemed kind of funny to him. And he was laughing as he told me...but here he was working in the call center, not going to college, and starting to feel like he was off-course.

Hockey season was over, so Gary and I got our group back together to go to a baseball game. Here we were again, a group of twenty-something guys laughing and high-fiveing and cheering and jumping around. It ended up changing Gary's life.

Juan Gonzalez crushed a home run to center field, and we all jumped to our feet in celebration. Even more exciting, the Jumbo-Tron featured us jumping up and down and celebrating. I turned to Gary, who was staring at the huge screen but had lost all happiness from his face.

"Am I really that fat?", he asked.

Well, how do you answer that? So I didn't.

"I mean, look at me, there. I stopped jumping but my stomach did two or three more bounces." As if on cue, the Jumbo-Tron actually replayed our group in slow motion jumping around. I didn't really notice anything, but Gary was horrified.

"Oh my God!" and he dramatically covered his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Hey, lemme get you another pretzel..." was my helpful solution (because that's the way twenty-something year old guys rub things in).

It turns out that the Jumbo-Tron changed Gary's life forever. He went on a regimented diet and exercise routine and lost over 100 pounds. He went to join the navy, and they told him that he had to lose 35 more, and he did. It all took over a year, during which time his mother bought a horse ranch in the country and Gary quit his job at the call center and ran the ranch. The physical work helped him shed some of the weight, and when he finally got accepted to the navy, they had a party out at the ranch.

That was the last time I saw Gary, although he did call from Seattle during his training and he dropped me a card a year or so later.

For a guy who couldn't cut it as a comedian., it's odd that he still cracks me up 14 years later.