by Dan
It was just after college, maybe February 1997 when I moved out for good. I got a job in Bloomington, Illinois working for a truck stop company. It was a great gig and was hopefully the stepping stone I needed to get back to Romania (that’s a different story). You see, since 1994 my goal has been to build, own and operate my own resort in Romania.
But I stop digressing and get back to the story. I’d lived there for some time living in a small apartment pretty near work. My life consisted of work during the day in the office learning the trade of an executive assistant and then after 5:00 I’d switch and work in one of the profit centers of the truck stop.
For a while I’d work in the restaurant and then behind the fuel desk and sometimes in the travel store. After a while I’d learned a lot about the operations of the truck stop – but to some degree – at the expense of my early 20′s. Working at the truck stop was what I did.
And as in all stories of this nature, along comes Mark. He decided to come visit for a while and hang in Illinois. I didn’t work in the truckstop after 5 while he was, just went home eager to hang out and do something. Anything.
Shortly after arriving we went out and bought a new futon for the living room. This was a major purchase for me, at the time, and I actually bought a very nice oak framed futon. Sitting next to the couch I’d received as a gift from friends in high school, it looked stately.
It wasn’t two days later that we somehow broke it. We were playing some sort of tackling game in the living room and instead of using the old beat up couch – we used the new expensive one. Crack! The wood split. I ended up mending it with lots of “L” brackets and screws. It never looked quite ‘stately’ again.
Then one day while we were out and about I got misty-eyed. I turned toward my driverside window to avoid Mark’s seeing my glassy eyes, but it was no use. He said, “Dude, what’s wrong man?”. And then I couldn’t help it. The tears and blubbery started. For a few minutes in the car in a parking lot, I couldn’t stop.
I think I was so happy to have someone around, a friend. I was so happy to be doing something with Mark – not sitting alone at the apartment. I’m not sure I was afraid of life after Mark went home; I think I had been lonely so long that it all came out.
After that point, I was fine. I ended up with great friends there. And met my wife there. But I remember that day quite vividly. I remember knowing how important it is to have friends around. I remember learning how important it was to have friends.
Thanks, Mark.
