Many thanks to my guest blogger today, Christopher David Peter Wilcox, of Palo, Iowa, author of www.redhogdiary.com, formerly of the nutty bunch I used to hang with back in my hometown, Cedar Falls, Iowa.
First a disclaimer from the Iowa Department of Tourism and Inadequacy, “Under no circumstances are non-native Iowans allowed to use the ‘Idiots Out Wandering Around’ reference.” You have to have been born and raised here to be able to say that. Iowa consistently scores in the top two or three ACT, SAT and GMAT rankings on an annual basis and we have one of the highest literacy rates in the nation. So if you aren’t from here and refer to us as idiots, well, what does that really say about you?
My good friend Dr. Hahn* has asked me to write a guest post for her blog and I was all too eager to oblige. I am a large fan of the site as you might be if you are reading this now. Actually there is a differentiation between you and me that must be made. Whatever I am a fan of; I am a “large” fan. For whomever I do business with; I am frequently their “largest” customer. This is attributable to a personal trait I possess which might most aptly be described as “an extremely freekin efficient metabolism”. But enough about me.
I have known Dr. Hahn virtually all of my life. Our history begins at the school playground back in Cedar Falls, Iowa. I had a brand new pair of roller skates and she had a key. Cedar Falls is a lovely little town with tree-lined streets, lots of parks and friendly neighbors. The town is home to a mid-major university that provides enough culture to satisfy all the residents that live within the surrounding millions of acres of corn. When I was about 11 years old I was over at the playground hanging out when this cute little blonde girl came by and started to play on the monkey bars. Her agility on the apparatus was such that I never again questioned the nomenclature assigned to that particular apparatus. It just kind of all of a sudden made sense somehow.
We started talking and she seemed to be pretty good at that, talking, for a 10 year old and she kind of had this thing going for her that reminded me of Jodie Foster. In spite of the fact that I bailed off the teeter-totter while she was at the apex she agreed to meet me again the next day. We just hit it off and became instant buds. We continued meeting at the playground most every day all the remaining summers of our youth. We transitioned that friendship into a vaguely more mature relationship in high school but you can read all about that on her February 14th post on this very site. To this day Dr. Hahn is want to remind me, at nearly every opportunity, that I was pretty much a schmuck as far as boyfriends go. She is probably right about that but I gotta tell ya, I wasn’t a schmuck in a mean or manipulative way. My schmuckiness was borne of the fact that it was the underlying characteristic of the best I could do at the time. I wonder if she finds some warped sense of comfort in the fact that I haven’t really changed all that much in thirty years?
I keep telling her to move home, to leave that big city life behind but the girl I knew has become a California woman. I pointed out that we have everything here that she could possibly be attached to in California. George Wythe State Park in Cedar Falls has a beach. The land fill in Cedar Rapids is within meters of reaching a bona fide mountain status and if you stand on the sidewalk next to the Cargill plant you can imagine you are feeling an earthquake as the grain trucks rumble by. One day last I witnessed five cars at the four-way stop leading into town so we have that hustle and bustle of city traffic thing going for us. She ain’t buying it.
I’m happy to see that Lori has found a place she can call home. She has maintained the qualities that were endearing in her youth and has expanded her world in ways that we back home can only imagine. No matter where you go, there you are. Do you think Buckaroo Bonzai may have been from Iowa?
* Mutually assigned title of Doctor in no way reflects actual academic achievement.
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Published on: May 26, 2006
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