One of life's wonderful pleasure is to have friends whose company you enjoy. I first met Tom and Raeanne when they were students in one of my bridge classes. They had come with another couple, Lynne and Bill. After going through several of my eight week programs, Tom spoke this complaint to me - that they were all the worst card holders in the world. I said "this is impossible," but he persisted, so I took the bait: "How about if I come over and watch to see if this is true." They eagerly agreed, and so I observed them the very next Friday night.
Tom dropped an "F" bomb, but that just meant, I was among my own kind. What was stunning was that Tom had spoken truth: they all were individually and collectively the worst card holders I had ever seen, and I had to tell them as much. Which somehow soothed and reaffirmed their convictions. Thus, continued to sign up for my classes. Tom particularly loved the class on preemptive bidding - or, how to bid a lot with a little.
"It's all about shape," Tom was fond of saying (and still is). "Fits take tricks baby." Yes, that too.
After Raeanne and Bill retired, and they invited me to play a regular weekly afternoon home game with them and a partner of my choosing. Thus I had an opportunity to invite many of my students to join us.
After Bill and Lynne split up, I was the logical replacement for their regular Friday night game and leaped at opportunity; we had a lot in common, and as wonderful as it was being a weekend warrior dad to my son and his three cousins, I needed to expand my social horizons. Tom and I decided that in our health interests (and acknowledging the lack of will power we both shared) the snacks had to go, so, it was just bridge, beverage, competition, and laughter.
Three of Tom's stories have become my favorites, and I periodically asked him to retell them because he does it so well, even though Raeanne eyes invariably roll. One is about the Christmas tree his fraternity commandeered one year. There is another fraternity story, the specifics of which I can't divulge, other than to say that as outgoing fraternity treasurer in his senior year, after a boisterous toga party, Tom left a short memo to the incoming treasurer to faithfully pay a certain $5.00 monthly bill, and to ask no questions about it.
My favorite is the story about how Tom and a buddy got the idea (and almost had it implemented) to pay for putting up a sign on the West Jefferson Street Bridge, in Rockford, Illinois. The sign, initially approved by the "powers-that-be," contained this warning: In Rockford, suicide is redundant.
Eventually, someone must have determined that this was not an anti-suicide slogan. But if nothing else, we know that for one brief shining moment: In Rockford, irony was alive.
