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(Actual boss may have slightly smaller nose...and it's on the FRONT of his face)
I remember that day clearly. It was summer, and we were driving home from a shoot. The windows were open and the breeze blew through my hair as I basked in the glory of being on vacation from college. It really didn’t feel like work, even though we had just shot an interview for one of the cable company’s regional sports programs. I think we were talking about my butterfly tattoo – the one he had told me not to get the year before – when a DARE car, brightly painted to resemble being covered with confetti, drove past. Me: “That looks cool.” Him: “That looks stupid.” It was right then that I realized the true miracle of our friendship. You see my friend, the man in question, is not an old high school buddy, or a childhood companion. He’s not someone I met through a friend of a friend, or dated in college. He is a forty-year-old golf enthusiast, who enjoys dabbling in local politics and taking his young daughter to the park. He belongs to a country club. He is my polar opposite. And yet, he is one of my dearest friends. They say proximity breeds affection. If you spend enough time with a person day after day, eventually you’ll become fond of one another. That is the only explanation I can think of for my relationship with this man. We spent at least four hours a day together in close quarters during the five years I directed his television show. Toward the beginning we didn’t have much to talk about. I wasn’t interested in sports or city government, and he wasn’t interested in any of my barely-post-teenage problems. Our only discussions revolved around work. As time passed, slowly we began to find things we had in common – sort of. I listened to No Doubt…he thought Gwen Stefani was sexy. I liked The Eagles…he was from the generation that was supposed to like The Eagles. I liked Star Wars…he liked Star Trek. Even though this really wasn’t a common interest, it sparked debates between us that fleshed us out as human beings, not just co-workers. Good-natured ribbing turned into an appreciation of each other’s personalities. Soon, we teased each other about all kinds of things. I would drop comments here and there about how he was just barely old enough to be my father, and he would make fun of my obsessions with disco music and Scott Baio. Soon, our differences didn’t matter any more. We liked each other, plain and simple. He became something that my other friends couldn’t be for me – a role model. He was the kind of adult I aspired to become, the kind of adult I hadn’t had in my life previously. And he was constantly going to bat for me…helping me with everything from buying a car to handling some toxic relationships that needed extinguishing. He was my “grown-up” sounding board, the person I could turn to when I needed objective advice. And even though our opinions differed quite often, as with the whole tattoo thing, his advice was usually right on the money. Typical friendships – those I had with people my own age – were a two-way street. I’d help them just as much as they would help me. But unfortunately, the seventeen-year age difference involved in this friendship meant that he just didn’t need me like a normal friend would. He had a wife and friends his own age, which didn’t leave much room for advice giving or even socializing on a regular basis. Occasional babysitting was about the extent of what I could offer him in return for the wealth of guidance he had provided me with over the years. Although it left me feeling a little one-sided, it was the nature of what we had created, and I had no choice but to accept it. I can’t help but wonder about the future of our relationship. Once I left the cable company, our proximity was gone. And as I get older, and need him less and less, what will be left? After all, we never really had much in common, except our affection for each other. Maybe that’s all we really need.
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