"You don't mean communists, do you, Sam?"
Sadly, no. The cinetrix has the mean reds, but bad. She just learned that the dad of her childhood best friend succumbed to cancer this Saturday.
Don was the regional manager of Radio Shack when he landed in our New England burb decades ago, but despite all the corporate relocations, he was a Southerner at heart. It was at his house that the cinetrix first had deviled eggs [thank you, Phyllis] and so many other firsts. Theirs was truly my second home, and Cari's parents--only children parents of an only child--were my own second parents throughout most of my childhood. They took me along on weekend trips to New Hampshire and waited patiently as my carsick self yacked up Taang in some diner parking lot along the way. And we would always go to Pop's Donuts once in Wolfboro. You begin to see what I mean.
And as a Shack guy, Don was an early adopter home electronics gearhead. I experienced my first VCR and later my first CD player at his house, and it was there that Cari and I watched Time Bandits again and again on cable precursor Starz. [OK, and also reruns of The Brady Bunch, but don't tell my mom. She wouldn't let me watch "because the girls don't get to do anything."] Much later, when we were callow adolescents., Phyllis escorted Cari and me to the Queen Ann to see Fletch. It felt so glamorous then.
They were and are good, generous people, Cari's parents, and Don's passing has me crying for both his and my father-in-law's deaths in a way that the past few weeks somehow hadn't allowed.
Don was special. We all knew those grown-ups when we were kids. They maintained the generational hierarchy, yes, but they took our slights and wounds seriously. Hell, Don took the cinetrix and her brother on their first motorcycle rides and escorted us around the neighborhood with Cari for trick-or-treating the year our little bro arrived back in 1980. He was a man full of joy and mischief even as an adult, and the kids could always sense that. Only now do I appreciate what a gift that was, to be so present.
We all had those important, nonparental adults in our lives when we were young [I hope].And oftentimes, one thing they did was take us to the movies. In honor of this dear man, feel free to shout out some of the most memorable cinematic excursions you went on with your own version of Don. And please set aside a moment of silence for him and all those like him in your own lives this Wednesday, October 25, which would have been his 60th birthday.
Resquiat in pace, Don. You set the grown-up cinetrix on her way long ago. Thank you.
