“What Are You Doing With Your Dash” (part two of two parts)

(To read part one, click on “other posts by Jerry Fino” at end of column)

Our what-ever-happened-to (insert name here) had us reaching out to old fraternity brothers via Facebook.  We found a few of the guys, called one in Chicago.  This was all a ramp up to “slide night.”  

In college I took slides.  Hundreds of them.  So we hunkered down in my basement with the slide projector and cast on the white wall of my rec room images of our lives, loves and fraternity brothers from the 70’s. We confirmed with a bit of melancholy that those were the best days of our lives in many ways even if we didn’t realize it then.  We all agreed that the women of the University of Arkansas were (probably still are) the most gorgeous American women we’d ever known.  Which caused us to wonder about this woman or that.  Which eventually lead us to wondering whatever happened to Kim (last name withheld.) 

Kim, 1978

Kim dated a fraternity brother of ours, became a friend to us all and was mind-numbingly beautiful.  As that friend, she had once consented to being a model for a photojournalism project that I had in J-school at the U of A.  Now, almost thirty years later, we were looking at those slides on my wall. We all wondered, what happened to Kim.  Which begged the question of wondering if this stunningly woman at twenty could possibly still be at age fifty.  The “after” image by contrast to the “before” picture on the wall gnawed at us to the point of hunting down Kim via Facebook, making a fast email connection, and requesting that she call us.  She did.  Huddled around the speaker phone, we paused the slides and had a frenetic conversation, we four, that was a disjointed but fun exchange.  Yes, she said she would email us some .jpegs of she and her two kids (she’s divorced). It wasn’t until the following morning that the pics arrived and confirmed the order of the universe was still in tact. Kim looks like she thawed out of a glacier. Stunning then, stunning now.

Kim, +30, 2008

We had a few other then/now comparison of other college friends similarly located on Facebook.  A few indicated some fairly rough road miles, which only made us feel cattily better about ourselves but only for a brief few moments.

We largely hung out, the weather cooperated and the neighbors came over to revel with us into the night on my back deck.  Pizza was ordered.  The Jägermeister was busted out as with a lovely bottle of lemoncello. The cabernet took a serious hit.  

Day three had the boys packing up to go home to their respective lives and parts of the country.  Soon I would shuttle them to the airport and take the leaf blower to the living room. The weekend had been a success beyond all expectations.  Friendships were cemented, promises to do-this-again were made, old times were remembered. 

It was on this Sunday morning that we had our final download, we three.  When Mark raised the question to me (which was really a way to make the point to us all, including himself). 

“What are you doing with your dash, Fino?”  

“What? What dash?” 

“The one that goes between the date of your birth and the date of your death.  The one that will be on your grave marker.”  

It’s pretty short, that dash. 

The most precious commodity that we will ever have is our time, how we spend it and with whom we spend it.  The greatest regrets we have in life are not about things we did, they are about things we didn’t do.  A faint heart never won a damn thing.  The flow of where our lives had taken us had brought us all to a speck in time and place with unique bits of experience that made for powerful arsenals of wisdom.  Over coffee Mark went into a compelling argument on “the dash” with the eloquence and cogency that made him a formidable closer in front of a judge and jury.  Just as Martin Luther King had his “I have a dream,” speech, Mark, in my life and on Labor Day weekend, gave his, “You have a shot, Fino…” speech.  He was using my life and circumstances but reminding himself with Jeff adding a knowing layer.  These two men are two of the finest men that I know, and they feel the same way about me.  We have all grown to be honorable, productive, decent men who have not sold out to the flakiness of ego, the desire for power or the want of material things.  There are a lot of men out there like us.  They’re called Average Joes.  What is uncommon, however, is the penchant for introspection, self-awareness and constant honing of insight that has driven us all, sometimes a little mad.  

No other experience in recent life has catapulted me in the direction of being more personally certain about an uncertain future and that I must have done something right to have the approval and respect of these two fine men though I have never received recognition for anything on a professional or public level and darn few in private, frankly.  That doesn’t matter to me very much, and I’m happy to not really need that. 

Men best express their love and admiration for each other through small, outward signs of respect telegraphed in often strange ways: telling of things in our past that the other guy thought was good or wise or smart, identifying something about the other guy that we wish we could also do or be (that the other guy does or is), insulting each other’s mothers or the virtue of our sisters.  

The weekend we shared was just long enough.  Another day together and we’d have been picking lice off of each other’s backs and setting our farts on fire with a bic lighter (affectionately know as “blue dogs” where I come from.)  Dang, that would have been a lot of fun.