Day 769: The Chair, Part 25 - The R&R Ticket

For those of you not in the Foreign Service, you probably aren’t familiar with the R&R concept… at least not in the context of how we use the term in the service.  And for those of you in the Foreign Service you know that R&R tickets are like GOLD!

I will ‘quickly’ explain:

An R&R Ticket (Rest and Recuperation Ticket) is a full fare airline ticket (for you, spouse, and kids) back to any location in the States (or a pre-specified R&R Point) so members of the Foreign Service can get away and use their annual leave in a more ‘relaxed’ environment. 

What’s an R&R Point?  Well, every post that qualifies for R&R (not every post gets them) has an R&R point.  In Belgrade, our R&R Point was London.  So we had the choice of going to London or the States… technically, there are other options that allow you to go anywhere in the world you want, but I don’t feel like explaining the concept of a ‘cost construct’ right now.

Also, every post has different R&R eligibilities.  As I hinted before, some posts, like London and Rome, don’t have any R&R eligibilities at all… because those locations are already considered ‘western’ and ‘relaxing’.  At posts like Belgrade you get an R&R for every 18 months you’re at post.  Sarajevo, you get one for every 12 months of service.  And for Islamabad you get one for every 6 months of service.  Quick math, for a 2 year tour in each of these cities you would get the following:

Belgrade: 1 R&R

Sarajevo: 2 R&Rs

Islamabad: 4 R&Rs

You get the idea. 

Well, my tour in Belgrade was a two years assignment; even though it was technically a 24 month tour, I would have needed a 36 month tour to get the second R&R.  So, I have just one R&R.

Originally, Serena and I planned a very nice vacation to Atlanta together… BUT… shortly after planning it, we found out Serena was pregnant with Gilliam.  SO, I cancelled my part of the R&R so I could use the ticket to get back to the States for the birth.  However, life came at us again.

About a year ago, Costello contacted me about his father.  Lung Cancer.   The Costello’s, like the Patterson’s, are a second family to me.  And it pained me that I was so far away, but Costello and I stayed in touch throughout.

In October, Costello contacted me about his dad again.  Hospice… they weren’t sure if he was going to make it to Christmas.  Two weeks later, on a Friday afternoon in Belgrade, I came back from lunch and found an email from Jeff.  His father had passed.  My response?

“I’m on my way.”

What Costello didn’t know is that I had been mobilizing. 

By the time I received his email about his father entering Hospice, Serena and I had already decided to have Gilliam in London rather than traveling back to the States, so Serena and I decided I should use my R&R ticket for the funeral.  I quickly got permission from my supervisors and let the management office and our travel office know what my plans were… although we had no idea when I would be leaving.   

Two hours after I got the sad news from Costello I had a sign leave slip, R&R orders, a funding site, and tickets on the first plane out the next morning.  And thirty-six hours later we were in an Atlanta bar together toasting his father.

That’s the kind of friendship I am talking about.

Day 768: The Chair, Part 24 - The Getting On With It… Kind Of

Okay, I need to stop.  Seriously.  If I don’t put myself in check, I could easily continue my Costello stories for the next few days, weeks, months, years. 

I could tell you about the 10 times he’s helped me move.  I could tell you about when I was accepted into the Foreign Service and he said, “They’re helping you move, right?  Cause I’m not doing it.”

I could tell you about the time my car broke down on I-20 about two and a half hours outside of Atlanta and he rearranged his schedule to come get me.

Or, the OTHER time my car broke down and he drove me across town so I could attend a dinner in honor of my Niece/God Daughter Kiersten.

The time he attended my graduation…

Or, when he showed up 10 hours early to my parent’s lake house the day of my wedding… the wedding that Serena and I planned ourselves… and without being asked, Costello took the helm and began stage managing our big day so we didn’t have to worry about the caterers, photographers, musicians… or anything.  And you know what?  We didn’t worry about anything… everything went off without a hitch… and that was thanks to Costello.

No, even if I told you all of those stories you would ever fully understand the bond that Costello and I have.  Except for maybe this one story… the one about the R&R Ticket.

In a nut shell… Costello is R&R ticket worthy.

Day 767: The Chair, Part 23 – The ‘Go Ask Alice’ Set, Part 3

So, by the time our incredibly intelligent teacher helped us move everything the school ever bought the Drama Club to Costello’s house it was lunch time… so the five remaining builders headed off to Wendy’s to carb-up for the rest of our day. 

Shortly after finishing lunch, two of our builders called it quits for the day.  Seriously… they helped us move everything, ate, and then left.

So who was left besides Costello and me?  Well… it was none other than Justin.  You remember Justin right?  I wrote about him on Day 754?

That’s right… it’s a Costello Crossover story!

Yeah, so when I started developing my interest in theatre and started peeling away from band, most of my band friends were like, “I can’t believe you would do anything except band, band, band… AHHHH!”  They grew fangs and would chase me through the halls… no, not really.  For most people, band was their only social outlet and they didn’t really branch-out… so when I stared to branch-out… they weren’t interested in coming with me… except for Justin.

You see, Justin was also the younger brother of a Pope High School badass… His brother had been in both Band and Drama… so when I made my move, Justin though it was only logical and came along as a stage hand.

So… there we were; the three of us… Justin and I were already good friends… but we were still fairly new in our friendship with Costello… at least until after the build… our ‘shared experience’.

Well… we dug in deep and the three of us started building… and about five hours later… we had finished… about half of the set.  We were a little frustrated… annoyed… and a bit discouraged.  We probably had about 5 hours of work left (or more)… and we were getting tired and started slowing down.

Now, when I am faced with something that ticks me off and I’m tired… I like to finish it… I totally buckle down and push through no matter how painful the process is (or how painful my attitude is).  And Justin balanced that beautifully, because he’s a pretty positive guy… so he was our cheerleader.  And thankfully, Costello is a bit more realistic.  When it was time to break for dinner and we were completely battered and beaten… Costello looked at us and said, “Have you guys ever seen the movie ‘Brain Donors’?” 

Neither Justin nor I had seen it… BUT, stopping to watch a movie in the middle of a build went against everything I believed in and I fought the idea.  I lost… well… we compromised.  We decided to watch it while we ate dinner.

Now, Brain Donors is a totally stupid, yet hilarious movie dreamt up by the Zucker Brothers (who made Top Secret and Airplane!).  ‘Brain Donors’ was their tribute to the Marx Brothers and it stars John Turturro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_Donors).  The last ten minutes of the movie is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen!

Anyway, we ended up watching the whole movie… and we just laughed and laughed.  After the day we had, we needed to laugh.   And that laugher gave us the energy to push through to the end.

By the time the movie was over it was dark outside… but that didn’t deter us.  We turned on our headlights… and mounted work lights all around Costello’s driveway… and got back to work, all the while quoting the ridiculous lines from ‘Brain Donors’… and then…  and we finished the set!  It took us until midnight… but we finished. 

Three guys, fourteen and a half hours, and a liability waiting to happen produced the entire set for ‘Go Ask Alice’. 

After that day and unbreakable bond was forged.

Day 766: The Chair, Part 22 – The ‘Go Ask Alice’ Set, Part 2

Don’t worry folks, there are only two parts to this sub-story… there is no telling how many parts there will end up being in the main story of “The Chair”… but for the ‘Go Ask Alice’ set there will be only two parts… I promise.

So, where was I?

Okay, when our Drama teacher told us it was time to clean-up and finish our build we proposed an alternative:

To transport everything we needed to build the set from the school to Costello’s driveway, which was only about a mile down the road. 

Our drama teacher thought this was a good idea and agreed...

Let me repeat: ‘Our drama teacher thought this was a good idea and agreed.’

Folks.  About eight years after this incident, I actually became a High School Drama Teacher.  THIS WAS NOT A GOOD IDEA!  The liability issues of a maneuver like this insane! 

How so?  Well, let’s break this down and discuss what she really agreed to.

1.       She agreed to let students remove school property from the school grounds UNSUPERVISED.  Building a set on the weekend at someone house is not abnormal… BUT, not having a teacher or a booster club member there to supervise IS abnormal.

2.       This property didn’t simply include lumber, hammer and nails… No!  It included POWER TOOLS (screw guns, circular saws, and even a TABLE SAW!)  Seriously… do you really think sending a table saw, owned by the school, home with a bunch of teenage boys is a good idea?

3.       She helped us load the trucks!

Seriously, folks, I’m dumbfounded by the actions my teacher took… once I became a teacher I would look back on this and cringe. 

What the heck was she thinking… oh yeah… half price margaritas at ‘On the Board’… it was a weekend lunch special.

Okay… I lied… it’s a three part story.

Day 765: The Chair, Part 21 – The ‘Go Ask Alice’ Set

I’m not really sure how many of you have participated in a theatre production before.  Your experience doesn’t have to be fancy: a high school show, a community theatre show, or even one drunken rainy night standing on the Tri-Delta’s front lawn shouting poetry at second floor windows.  It doesn’t matter, these are all viable productions.

Unless of course you are involved in a One-Act play version of ‘Go Ask Alice’.  Nothing is more entertaining than a 25 minute show about teenage drug use.  Seriously folks; Amazon’s description of ‘Go Ask Alice’ starts with the following:

“The torture and hell of adolescence has rarely been captured as clearly as it is in this classic diary by an anonymous, addicted teen.”

WHOOHOO!  High School Drama Club ROCKS!

Yes, ‘Go Ask Alice’ was torturous and hellish, but not as torturous and hellish as building the scenery for ‘Go Ask Alice’.  How so?  Well, we were dealing with too little time and too little man power.

Let me tell you something about high school drama students… everyone wants to me an actor and they think sets and props grow on trees.  And worse yet, when they don’t get cast in the school play… they pout and “quit” drama club… until the next audition.  They all want to be stars…

Did I want to be a star?  Sure… but I wanted to be a jack-ass with a blog more… which is why I never quit when I didn’t get cast.  I joined stage crew.  Because being part of the show was better than NOT being part of the show… or going home to do homework.

Costello, on the other hand was always stage crew, that’s where he liked to be…, behind the scenes.  Incidentally, in his spare time, Costello is still working behind the scenes and was recently nominated for an Atlanta Community Theatre Award for Best Lighting Design.

Anyway, for ‘Go Ask Alice’ Costello served as Stage Manager, he was ALWAYS stage manager, which meant he also did the lights, the sound, the set and anything else that needed to be done with the handful of people willing to help.

For the ‘Go Ask Alice’ set, his hand full of minion dwindled to three rather quickly… almost as quickly as we were kick off the school property by our Drama teacher.

Here’s the skinny. 

We only had one weekend to build the set and Costello, with the ‘help’ if our Drama teacher, organize a build day… our goal was to finish the entire set in one long day.  It was a tough goal, but doable. 

Around 9:30 in the morning about 10 people had started trickling in ready to work.  By around 10am, people were already starting to come up with excuses to leave… and by around 11:30, our numbers had shrunk in half.  Then we were dealt what could have been our final blow.

Our Drama teacher came in and announced that we needed to clean up and call it a day.  Costello freaked out.  “WHAT! We’ve barely started!”  “I told you I could only stay until 11am… I’ve already given you an extra 30 minutes.” 

Now, before I continue I will share a couple pieces of information. 

1.      It usually takes weeks to build a nice looking set… especially for unsupervised high school students.  I’ve only witnessed a group of high school students build a set in one day once in my life.  It was when I was teaching high school… and Costello came to run the build for me… we started at 9am and by a little after midnight, we had a two story set built.

2.      Our Drama teacher was looney-tunes.  Seriously… she was fruit cake crazy.  She would pull stuff like this all the time… she told us we could have an all day build and she never once told us we could only have a couple hours.  Later we found out she had a pretty major drinking problem and was a regular as a bar known for attracting older singles who wanted to hook-up and snort lines.  Seriously.  If she had ever been a good teacher, I might have felt sorry for her.

3.      Costello was pissed.  Costello was VERY pissed.

After a string of profanity, Costello went into panic mode… how do we salvage the day?  We’re not allowed on school property without a teacher present.  What do we do?

Well, there was only thing we could do… move the build.

Day 764: The Chair, Part 20 – The Shared Experience

Now where was I?  Ummm… errr… let’s see… wedding, glider chair, fear of chairs, IKEA, fear of IKEA, friendships, Costello, fear of Costello (wait, no, I cut that part out)… ah yes… chicken!  Before taking a three day break from “The Chair” (completely destroying my numbering… so now Part 20 is on August 23rd making my life soooo confusing) I left off comparing friendship to a whole deep fried chicken.  It’s a sensible comparison really... 

Seriously… 

No, not seriously.

The point I was trying to make is that the word “friendship” is rather generic… like the word “food”.  People use it to refer to all sorts of things.  There is no real sense of hierarchy or importance in the word ‘friendship’.  The word itself has now measure of a friendship’s bond.

Example: If, once upon a time we, shared a bloomin’ onion at a finely catered event and you told me a good joke… when I repeat this joke to other people at different events, I would probably credit you as ‘a friend’… example: “A friend of mine told me this great joke a while back, want to hear it?  Two nun’s walk into a---.”

Following me?  If two people make polite conversation about nun’s while eating fried food, we can describe that as a foundation for being friends… even though we would technically them “acquaintances”.  

But, you would never catch me saying, “This acquaintance I once meet told me…” No!  People don’t say that.  Well, maybe some people do… but they’re weirdoes… and probably wouldn’t appreciate my nun story in the first place… and I would be more likely to say to people, “Hey, get a load of that wack-job with the onion who doesn’t like jokes about nuns!” 

Just kidding, I would never say something like that… however, since my mom was once in a convent… I am a clearing house for funny nun stories.  Seriously.

I digress.

Now days, the term ‘friend’ can mean any number of things.  BUT, a true honest to God friendship comes at a price… a shared experience… a victory!  a defeat.  An epic encounter of some design… much like I did with that deep fried chicken.

Having trouble understanding?  

Think about the movie Deliverance.  Four work buddies going on a rafting trip… only to have their fun destroyed by inbreed banjo players.  But they banded together and survived… some of them survived!  And you know?  After an experience like that, I bet they were best friends for life!  

Well, maybe not Ned Betty… I don’t know how he could look anyone in the eye after they’ve seen him squeal like a pig. 

It’s all about the ‘shared experience’. 

And for Costello and me… our shared experience… our very first, of many, shared experience was the building of the ‘Go Ask Alice’ set.

Day 763: SchutzHappens, The Movie - June/July 2010