A Seinfeld Day

Yesterday was one of those strange days. Everything I needed to have happen, to make everything I needed to work out perfectly, happened. Like I was Jerry Seinfeld.

It started with Lisa asking me at around noon, when I joined her retired self for a coffee, if I heard anything from Veronica Redmyer. I told her I hadn’t, and then went back down to my office and opened up my email.

There was a very touching email from Veronica:

“Tom,

Thank you. I am really touched by your post and it took me this long to stop crying from reading it over and over to compose myself to reply to this email. I am really grateful for what you are doing.

Here is my contact information:

Veronica Redmyer

[*******************]

To this day, I still hear and remember the excitement and joy he felt from meeting you. Josh would tell me about many of his adventures and the people he met, but there was something different about meeting you that is sticking out from all of the others and their stories that I know.

I really appreciate your kind gesture to me and look forward to understanding what impact you had on Josh in that one meeting.

Veronica”

Now if my life had ended at that moment with a meteor strike, I would have crossed the veil a happy man.

I went back upstairs to share the email with Lisa, who then said we should get the package out to Veronica today.

Well, I had the set of books ready to go, but Lisa said we should send out that photo of me and Josh along with the books. But we didn’t have that photo. And we didn’t have a box that could hold it all.

That would require me finding the original photo on my phone or computer and then sending it off on the internet to the Longmont Wallgreen’s to get printed. Then driving to Longmont and back with the photo. The only problem with that was that we had a 2:30 appointment at Berthoud Town Hall to get our passport applications squared away. It was already 12:30.

There was no way we would be able to get all that done, get it packed and ready to go before we had to go to Town Hall. Then, depending on how long the passport stuff took, which, based on our NYC experiences could be forever, we couldn’t be sure we would be out in time to get to the Post Office before closing.

I tried to explain that all to my wife. I summed it up as follows: “It is undoable. Tomorrow’s another day.”

She responded to that proclamation the way she has with every other proclamation I had made for about 47 years. Complete rejection.

She sent me down to the dungeon to find the photo and send it off to Walgreen’s while she searched for a box from the Amazon stash we keep in the garage.

As you know, I take lots of photos so I hadn’t a clue how to find that one. But then I remembered that my blogs are dated, so if I found the date of the original blog, I could check around that date on my phone, and viola!

But Lisa’s box search had come up empty, and the photo would not be ready until 1:30 pm.

“We can do this tomorrow, honey.”

“Go to Walgreens, maybe it will be ready.”

So, off I went on the twenty minute each way drive. Lisa went upstairs to shower and get her passport face ready for the photo.

Luckily, there is no magical preparation known to humankind to make this face passport ready, so why bother.

When I arrived at Walgreen’s, I went to the photo studio and saw a nice older woman standing by the counter. She looked up from what she was reading on a computer screen as I approached.

“Listen,” I began hesitantly, “we sent a photo to be printed, but I’m a half hour early.”

“Name?”

“McCaffrey”

Without even looking she reached behind her and grabbed a large cardboard envelope from the stacks of racks. Sure enough, there was the 8 by 10.

Since I was on a roll, I asked. “You wouldn’t happen to sell shipping boxes?”

She waltzed past me in a way I instinctively knew meant “Follow me.” She led me to an aisle on the other end of the store looked down the shelves and on the bottom lifted a white cardboard square, the last one in that spot, opened it into a box shape, slid the cardboard into its rectangle and said,

“Lucky you, last one and a perfect fit.” She handed me the photo and box and then pointed to the cashier and when I returned my gaze from following her pointed finger she was gone.

I got back in record time and inscribed the photo and books,

just about the time Lisa emerged from the Tower looking very pretty for her photo.

“Great,” she said, without the least amount of surprise in her voice. “Let’s go.”

“But our appointment isn’t until 2:30. It’s only 1:45.””

“Come on, maybe they’ll take us early.”

I have had over 6 decades as a New Yorker and 4 decades as an attorney to know government bureaucracies never make life easier and said so. Confident in my rightness.

We arrived at City Hall ten minutes later and found the right room, and I approached the lovely young woman working busily behind the plexiglass.

After coughing politely, I started, “Excuse me miss, I know we are early for our appointment -“

“Name?”

” – McCaffrey.”

“You’re appointment is 2:30. We don’t allow early arrivals – “

“That’s okay,” I said, smugly smiling at my wife. “We’ll just wait.”

“- but today there’s been a cancelation, so yes, we can take you early.”

I couldn’t bring myself to look back at the uber-smug response face on my wife, which was then searing itself in my back, so I just “humuna, humuna, humuna’d” while I fumbled with my ever ready passport folder and engaged with the lovely young administrator behind the plexiglass in the passport process.

And an other lovely young woman in the office there actually reads my blogs on Nextdoor. Hi Wendy.

We were done in plenty of time to make it to the post office and mail the package to Veronica.

It now being almost 4ish, Lisa suggested we go to Mike O’Shay’s to have a quick meal in honor of Josh Redmyne. So we did.

We got to commiserate over the tragic event with some of the regular MOS crew and workers, including Kyle Dooley, the man in the photo with Josh in yesterday’s blog, who affirmed to all what a nice young man he was, as they had learned of his passing from the blog post. Lisa bought them a drink in Josh’s honor.

Amazingly, MOS had for the first time in my experience, offered an absolutely delicious special of a huge grilled Four Cheese sandwich with home made tomato soup. I was in vegetarian (not vegan) heaven.

But I was propelled into doggy heaven when the wonderful and charismatic bartender, whose name now escapes me, surprised me with an on the house dessert of delicious ice cream with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.

That is my last meal on death row request.

Jerry Seinfeld would have been jealous of just the kind of day I was having.

On the way home from MOS, I impulsively stopped by a regular place to get a 20 dollar Colorado Lotto quick pick, and the woman handed it to me along with an extra game on a separate piece of paper.

“I don’t know what happened, but it seems there is a new promotional Lotto event where the machine provides an additional free game when you buy a twenty dollars quick pick. This is your lucky day.”

After promising not to forget them should I win, I returned to my wife in the car with the opening salvo of “You’re never going to believe this. . . .”

So, Josh must have been watching over my comings and goings yesterday to make sure that I timely kept my promise to his mom, Veronica Redmyne. Thank you Josh. Do me a favor and give Jeter and Mr. Rogers a treat and a cuddle for me.

Veronica, if you are reading this blog, Josh is always going to be looking out for you. Enjoy the package. Let me know when you finish the four books and, if you like them, I’ll send you an inscribed copy of Where The Ley Lines Meet to complete your set.

Of course, should I win that lotto drawing, the drinks when I appear at MOS will be on me. Forever.

Well, Lisa has those tickets so I may never know if I won, except if she texts me one day from an undisclosed location to share that she has bought a mansion in Florida. I’ll keep you posted.

Until then, my fine, five readers, we need to engage with our respective Thursdays, to wrap up our work weeks so Friday will be free to complete the planning of our respective and collective Super Bowl weekends.

Now I need to go out and give those kitties a cuddle, and then do my rounds.

But no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.