From Groveland Diner over to The Tap

"So, where do you want to go for lunch, Dave?"

This was my first day taking him out and I didn't really know what he wanted to do or liked to do.

I had run into him a few times over the past few months at different diners with Glen, his primary caregiver.  So I figured Dave enjoyed going out to local spots like the A1 diner, Jimmy K's or Groveland Diner.

Dave didn't seem to have a preference, so I made arrangements with two other friends to meet up with us at the Groveland Diner and have lunch at noon.

Jen is also friends with Theresa and Dave, and works at a local church as the secretary. My friend Janet is friends with Jen, but didn't know Dave. Janet and I went to college together and a couple years ago when we "found" each other on Facebook, realized we lived in the same little town.

Dave filled Janet in on his medical condition, and Janet was recovering from surgery on a torn ligament in her knee, so they talked a lot about what was going on in their lives. We all have sons, so we talked about the boys and their own shenanigans.

After lunch, Dave said "You know where you're taking me next, right?"

Uh, no?

"To the Tap."

Strangely, it never crossed my mind to go to a pub for lunch. But there we went. To the Tap, for after lunch beers.

We had a great time, the bartender Jon was a real riot. Dave likes a Black and Tan, but the beers that are brewed at the Tap don't exactly work in a mix. Dave insists that they do. But Jon tried, and the beers just mix. They don't taste bad mixed together, but it isn't the best thing on earth when you're expecting something different.

How these shenanigans begin...

My friends Theresa and Dave live across town. My son and their sons are friends, and their oldest and my boy are in Boy Scouts together. I've known them since the boys were in Cub Scouts, so we're talking about 7 years at this point. 

Dave had a medical crisis a few years ago, I won't write about what happened here just yet - I'll leave that up to Dave if he wants to share that story. Suffice to say, life is a lot different for him right now than it was say five years back. 

Before Dave's medical crisis, I "knew" him as someone on the periphery of my circle of friends or acquaintances through The Lives of Our Boys. I knew Theresa pretty well  ... but Dave was "one of the dads" on the edges of Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. The moms ran the shows in Cubs, and some of the dads stepped up to do leadership work. Dave was on the road a lot, and wasn't as involved as others.

So he was kind of .... not someone I really overlapped with. A friendly wave and smile on the way in or out a door, a nod when kids were getting picked up. That kind of thing. But I didn't know him.

After the medical crisis, Dave was left unable to travel, unable to do his job, and Theresa brought him to Boy Scout things a lot more and I got to know him much better. Sitting on the side of the room at the end of a meeting, or on a park bench while the boys ran roughshod all over fields, we got to talking about life, the universe and everything.

I found this to be a fantastic experience. Someone who had a completely different life a few months earlier was now unable to live that life, and here he was, talking to me... whereas he probably never would have talked to me like this before. 

We talked about Shakespeare and Theater, music... lots and lots of music. Dave loves music, and a lot of our favorites are overlaps (we disagree on a couple too). We talked about his life growing up, his family... and sitting still on benches while boys played we developed a pretty nice friendship. 

After a few months, Dave said something to me along the lines of being thankful that this illness happened to him, because it changed his life, and made him stop moving and see what he was missing, and that he was thankful for our friendship. It was, for me, so sad and moving to hear someone say this... and I was glad myself that it happened, or I honestly probably never would have had the opportunity to get to know him. I cried on the way home from Boy Scouts that night...

So when Theresa called on me in February to be part of Team Dave, a group of friends and caregivers who help Dave out with the basics while she is at work, I was glad to join up. I had lost my job in March of 2010, and here in the dead of stupid New England Winter 2011, I was looking for something fun to do.

Lunch got us both out of the house, and gave us the one on one time to sit and talk. And eat. And drink beer. And talk about beer. 

I started referring to these outings as "Shenanigans." "Okay Dave, what kind of shenanigans are we up to today?" I would put in my Facebook Status that I was looking forward to Shenanigans with Dave.  People that we're both friends with laugh at this. As did Dave.

For me, it's been an enriching time. Part of me doesn't want to get a full time job again (even though I've been looking hard) because I'll absolutely miss out on this. We'll take that as it comes.