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Nearly a week has passed since I drove around New York City, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. visiting family and friends. There are many stories I could share, but I first want to bring you into a particularly unusual and uplifting encounter.
Last Sunday I met for brunch at Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland with Mark Richardson who I have known since I was seven years old and spent plenty of time with through eighth grade. In that final year, we were teammates on an outstanding basketball team, but after that, we lost touch as he went to Georgetown Prep High School and I went across town to St. John’s.
Rival schools.
We had hardly spoken a sentence to each other since then. So sitting down for the ultimate catch-up conversation – after all the high school bravado stuff had long since ended after we went to different colleges and raised kids and were winding down our professional careers – we filled our plates with eggs and donuts and waffles and started trying to recapture our lives for each other, what we learned, what it all meant, and what we cared about most.
He filled me in on his career in the commercial real estate industry. I had heard he had been highly successful – and he has been. But what struck me was he wasn’t bragging about his money or power or connections. He talked about how he approached selling from his earliest days with the mindset that he was going to close the sale, not to impress me by that as much as just tell me how he approached his job. I could tell he had been tenacious. I admire tenacious people willing to sell and sell and sell no matter how many rejections.
He said for many years he has been working long days and nights and did whatever it took to get the sales. He talked about all the helpful people he had met in the industry who enabled him to get his footing and how he now was helping younger people in his company.
I was struck by his wisdom, humility, and classiness. I felt an admiration for this guy who I had mocked in grade school for having the ambition to go to a rather elitist high school when in fact, in retrospect, I was a bit envious of but am no longer.
When he had last really interacted with me on that eighth-grade basketball team I was the star scoring 30 or more points multiple times. He was not the star.
I started telling him about my high school basketball career and how I started doubting my athletic ability and intellect. He was surprised. He never knew about these doubts and had no reason to think a star athlete in grade school and high school would end up with a confidence problem.
It got me thinking that we often don’t know what’s going on in people’s lives, or how they’re thinking about themselves. The most talented among us are, for all we know, highly insecure about themselves. It’s not until we get to know someone, to be open to hearing their honest feelings, that we learn what’s really going on with them.
I’m glad I told him about my tough times. He told me about what motivated him in his life to become the man he now is. We learned from each other. We connected, truthfully, for the first time in our lives – 54 years after we met.
Really for the first time ever.
We caught up for two hours and 45 minutes and only got to a morsel of what we had been doing all those years apart.
We could have been closer friends throughout those years but for a variety of reasons we weren’t. I wish we had been. Mark is my kind of guy: hard-working, not too serious, amusing, and open. An impressive person.
My father died a few years ago. In the back of the church – to my surprise – sat Mark by himself. I hadn’t told him my Dad had died but he heard somehow.
Last Sunday at brunch I told him it meant a lot to me he was there for my dad’s service. He said he goes to the funerals of people he really cares about. He knew not just me but several of my siblings.
I told him how much I have appreciated his positive encouragement of my blogs. It’s one of the reasons I reached out to him to get together. He has consistently responded favorably to what I’ve written. He didn’t have to take the extra few seconds to let me know that, but he has time and time again. And this guy’s busy like the rest of us selling real estate and dealing with life’s everyday issues. But he lifted an old friend when he didn’t have to and I didn’t deserve it.
He told me he thinks it’s great that I have a passion for writing and have pursued this.
I told him we need to get together again.
Last Sunday an old friend became a new friend.
And I have no doubt we will be new friends and old friends for the rest of our lives.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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