As soon as I saw Skutch wearing a tie I knew that it wasn't going to go well. He had arranged to meet Shirely Sessions and I at the Breakfast Club for lunch and conversation to catch up with one another.
Skutch is a reporter for the Savannah Morning News who covered Union Mission and me for years. While he doesn't look like it, he is the consumate professional. He looks like an actor in a "B" movie playing a reporter.
But yesterday he stood in front of the Breakfasat Club wearing a tie and a white shirt. That never bodes well at the Breakfast Club. It was 90 degrees and sunny and I was wearing a St. Martin tee-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops.
"Skutch, for Christ's sake! You got a tie on! And it's baby blue!"
"Some of us have to work for a living," he shot back with a crooked smile.
So we went inside where my extended Breakfast Club family were in full freenzy mode. Meaning they had lost their collective minds a couple of hours earlier, could taste the beers that they would be having at closing and were on the prowl to create fun.
I led Skutch to a booth and warned Val to leave us alone after telling her that he is my friend. Of course that did no good whatsoever. As soon as he and I took a seat in a booth, Val let a cube of ice fly across the restaurant and it hit Skutch right in the nose!
"I missed!," Val screamed. "That was meant for you!"
I've known Val a long time. She never misses.
Laughing, Skutch yells, "Did I mention I'm a reporter? You're in tomorrow's paper."
Val continued pleading her case. "I didn't know. It was meant for him!"
Then she disappeared and we never saw her again.
Shirely arrived twenty minutes late because she had to go home and change out of work clothes before coming to the Breakfast Club. Shirley is a very smart person who covertly runs Tybee Island, the United Way and most everything that happens.
So we fall into deep conversation with one another catching each other up as we had promised. When Ryan Sadowski, who looks like a serial killer, sat down next to Skutch, closed his eyes and asked, "Wadda ya want?"
We ordered burgers and home fries but Ryan had fallen asleep so we had to write the order down ourselves.
And with Ryan sitting there next to Skutch, sucking his thumb, sound asleep, Shirley, Skutch and I returned to talk.
What's next? Why are you thinking that? Who are you talking about? All of the things that friends talk about.
There was a lot of laughter.
I had another appointment so I had to crawl over Ryan who was now in the fetal position with his head in Skutch's lap, rubbing the baby blue tie across his face. Shirley, Skutch and I promised to get together again soon.
"Hey!" Skutch yelled. "Let me know whatever you do next! It's a story."
"I'm a has been," I grin back. (Joe Driggers, who is not my friend, and I are contemplating starting a new company of people like us. He wants to call it HASBE, pronounced Has-B, because he wants to think he's a rapper or something.)
There were a lot of hugs on the way out of the Breakfast Club from customers and my extended family and other members of my family who were there.
Driving into town, I found it hard not to smile. My friend Mitch Wesley (who is the greatest modern day philosopher alive today) said the other day that Einstein and Harry Chapin are right. You can move at such light speed that the future becomes the past and it is all one. He is right of course.
The elements of my past that will be going with me into my future are becoming more evident every day. Leave the not-so-plesant parts behind. Hold on to the people who have been so consistently there for you is a real no-brainer.
And I notice that love and laughter go together.
