A couple of days ago, I found out that a very dear friend of mine had passed away and immediately sat down in the Nerdery and started penning an obituary of sorts.
After re-reading the post that I wrote to commemorate his passing, whilst I wouldn’t really change how it ultimately came out, there were some very personal beats that were definitely pegging the darker end of the “sunshine and light” scale.
I’ve found through the years that the best way for me to try to process news of a shocking nature is to write. It’s also decidedly cheaper than therapy sessions at $300/hr or more which appeals to my tendency toward being cheap and miserly when it comes to unwanted demands against the treasury.
However, the resulting post (or in some cases a deep dive that rivals “War and Peace” in terms of length! 🙂 ) is probably as close to what I was actually feeling in the moment which is what I was trying to capture. I was shocked then, I still am now truth be told, and Dave’s passing really, really hurts and is going to for a while.
That is why it took over three hours to write from the time I cloned the placeholder post in WordPress to the time I hit Publish.
But there was a significant amount of time spent composing at the keyboard wondering how one of my fondest memories of Dave would fit into the overall piece and I ended up deciding that there was no way I could really fit it in without destroying the balance between the truth of how badly that news sucked and my hope for peace and solace.
The tone of that memory didn’t work for the story I was trying to tell at the time but I really didn’t want it to be lost to time without the story eventually being told.
So let’s fire up the pensieve and go back more than a few years and revisit this tale and when I’m done, I hope that you dear readers will understand why it didn’t make the final edit before smacking that Publish button a couple of days ago.
This would have been when the troupe of wayward vagrants that originally started out as Future Healthcare in Chapel Hill had survived successive mergers and buyouts to end up as part of A4 Health Systems and had moved the whole kit and kaboodle of us to an office in Crossroads off Dillard Drive in Cary.
David was driving an Audi A4 (somewhat ironic, if you ask me) which was the much nicer marque of the Volkswagen Passat I dearly loved driving so long ago.
One fine day, Dave asks me to follow him to the Audi dealership in the auto park halfway between Cary and Apex so he could drop off his car to garage to be mended and do a bit of routine maintenance and then we’d pop on over to Danny’s BBQ for a spot of lunch before wandering back to try our hand at coding quality software whilst enduring the customary BBQ hangover.
No problem…have truck, will travel! 🙂
We get to the Audi dealership and he joins the service lane queue and I head off to the car park to avail myself of the car park’s intended functionality and meet up with him right as he’s about to step up to the service advisor’s kiosk/desk.
I take up a position about meter behind and slightly to his left and settle into a comfortable position rather similar to parade rest but with my arms crossed across my chest. During the entire interaction, I never say a single word nor do I break from that position until Dave and I are heading out the door.
Dave gives the service advisor his list of things he’d like to be mended and maintained but for some reason the service advisor keeps looking at me. To this day, I have no idea what that service advisor expected me to say or do but as far as I was concerned, I was just Dave’s JAFO who was his ride back to lunch and work for the afternoon.
The next thing we know, the service advisor asks Dave in a kind of nervous tone of voice if he’d like to have a loaner car whilst his Audi was being mended.
Dave gets this confused look on his face which makes it clear that this is the first time this place has ever offered him a loaner car.
When the advisor offers up an Audi TT Quattro pocket rocket sports coupe as the loaner ride…Dave gets this smile that was a cross between beatific and Cheshire and couldn’t get those keys in his paws fast enough! He signs the service estimate and gets the loaner’s papers and we’re on our way to Danny’s.
If I’m truly honest, someone beat me back down US-64 to Danny’s by quite a hefty margin thanks to *AHEM* some rather spirited driving. 😉
We get to our table after putting in the order and practically in unison, the first words out of our mouths was “what in the world just happened there?!?”
He did confirm that not only did that dealer never offer him a loaner in his life, he’d never had a service advisor also offer up additional discounts and free services without being asked and having some sort of coupon in hand.
Truth be told, I’d missed that part because I was definitely ready for some BBQ to stave off the hypoglycemia and when it seemed like Dave’s needs were being properly sorted, I had tuned out of the conversation with the service advisor by that point. I can only hope that I didn’t have a bored look on my face. I don’t think I looked bored but one never truly knows, eh?
In the light of hindsight, I can now appreciate (and frankly laugh at!) what I imagine that service advisor had to be thinking seeing a person of a rather panoramic size standing silently behind his customer with arms folded across his chest…of course, I had to be Dave’s *BODYGUARD* and that Dave was a Very Important Person and neither of us were to be trifled with.
When we figured that out, we both burst out laughing so loud that everyone else in the BBQ shack had to wonder if we’d taken leave of what wits we had and if they should be ringing up the mental health section of the nearby WakeMed Cary hospital.
That was when David came up with the diagnosis that has stuck with me ever since.
“I know what happened! You *PROJECT MENACE* very well!”
As you might imagine, that led to even more laughter and more than a few minutes trying to regain some measure of composure so that we could walk back into the office without people wondering just what sort of things might have been going on during our lunch.
I’ll tell you this, it was absolute hell trying to keep a straight face and not burst into gales of laughter the rest of that day.
Projecting menace.
I *LIKE* the sound of that.
I’ll admit that I rather like that and whilst I’ve not gone out of my way to perfect my technique, there are times that I’ve no doubt that David Falwell’s diagnosis of me that day was truly spot on and is still as potent today as it was those many years ago. 🙂
Ever since then, I’ve never been able to look a service advisor in the eye when I’m at garage to get the vehicle du jour mended and not think of that memory and have a bit of a quiet laugh when there’s an extra discount or freebie tossed onto my bill.
There are many aspects of David Falwell’s personality that I dearly loved…he was genuinely a nice guy and he had this way of knowing other people better than they knew themselves.
There are so many positive memories I could choose to hold on tight when it comes to thinking of Dave but this is the one that is guaranteed to bring a smile to my face and light in my heart.
I’m sure he won’t mind…if anything, he’s probably laughing as well. 🙂