The Gulick family

I know there have been a lot of posts coming from me lately, but I've got nothing to do but sit here on the couch for at least another couple weeks. It's frustrating for a couple reasons. The first is watching Kelly do absolutely everything, while I can't help. The second, and probably more frustrating, aspect is that even if I were allowed to do anything, I simply don't have the physical strength to do it. Walking out to the mailbox and back is cause for a nap, and anything more strenuous than that incapacitates me for the rest of the day.

So here I am with not much else to do but write.

Kelly and I were talking this evening about something to do with cell phones in the classroom and we agree on the fact that they probably shouldn't be there. We did agree though, that the cell phone is really useful in situations where kids need to be picked after getting back from a road game. I remember in high school, getting back from a game and having to wait in line to use the payphone to get ahold of my mom so she could come get me and the other St. Helen kids. It was about 15 miles from St. Helen to the Roscommon High School and that meant that the coach had to wait at least 25 minutes and sometimes longer for all the kids to be gone. I have been on both sides of that coin and I know I hated waiting for parents to come and get kids. Of course, there is no reason to wait now with the cell phones. I once had to call a mother at home because I had waited a half hour after practice for her to come and get her daughter. She told me that she'd be there shortly, she was just in the middle of cooking dinner and she'd be there as soon as it was done. 20 minutes tops. She hung up before I could say a word, which was probably a good thing as the words that I was going to say probably would have gotten me fired.

This line of conversation brings me to the actual thought behind this post. When I was in high school, it was hard living in St. Helen. There were lots of reasons for this. Some of it was a social thing, but mostly, it was economic. We had to ride something called the mini-bus home from practice every day which cost money. Soon, the parents got together and started car-pooling to come and get us. This worked fine until one parent who was disgruntled because he couldn't take some back road shortcut home because he had to drop the rest of us off at our respective houses. His solution to this problem was to simply pull into Carter's Food Center parking lot and telling everyone to “get out. You can walk from here.”

This all happened from the sixth grade until our sophomore year when we could start driving. It cracks me up how kids today are so willing to wait to get their driver's licenses. I made my mom take me to the Secretary of State on my 16^th birthday so that I could get my license. After that, I inherited the old family car ( a brown ford escort wagon) and I started driving myself to school.

This didn't solve all of the problems that the St. Helen kids had though. When we were in middle school, practice was right after school so when you were done with school, you went right to the gym and then after practice, you went right home on the bus. Our freshman year was hard because we often didn't practice until later which meant that we had to find something to do from the time school got out until we started practice. We couldn't really go anywhere because we couldn't drive yet so we ended up spending a lot of time at the school waiting for practice to start.

I can't complain about any of this though, because this situation led me to one of the longest-lasting friendships of my life.

I had friends who lived in Roscommon and sometimes one of them would invite me to their house after school to hang out until practice started, and I have to admit, on other occasions, I invited myself to people's houses simply because I didn't want to wait at the school.

Bob Gulick's house was my most frequent stop for a lot of reasons. There were lots of reasons for this. From a material standpoint, Bob and his family ran a place called Airway Lodge. It was a vacation retreat for the Airway corporation and it was a cool place. I'll go into some of the fun we had there later, but for now, just know that it was a fun place to be. The biggest reason though was that Bob was a good guy and his family was always nice to me.

The Gulicks are a kind and generous family. It wasn't always just me who was looking for a place to hang out until practice started and often there were three or four of us that congregated at Bob's house and we were always fed dinner before we left. I'm sure that Bob got in trouble from time to time for not telling us to not come over, but we were never treated like we weren't welcome there.

While I always considered Bob as my friend, our friendship grew as we played sports together and by our sophomore year, we were pretty much inseparable. I spent a lot of time at his house because of the convenience, but mostly because I just enjoyed being around Bob and his family.

Bob was the youngest child in his family, and the only boy and so he had it pretty good. He was the guy in high school who was fortunate enough to be good looking, have a good personality, and have parents who were well off enough to give him pretty much whatever he wanted. He always had a nice car and gas in the tank, which was the most important thing at that age. And Bob was the kind of guy who never rubbed that stuff in your face.

As we got further into high school, we continued to hang out together and Erick Haight began hanging out with us. He was a year younger than us, but we all shared a lot of the same interests and enjoyed each other's company. We spent countless nights hanging out at the Lodge eating Okey Doke cheese popcorn and playing nintendo games, or full contact nerf basketball. We would skip school and go to Traverse City for the day and we would go to the Rock House on the weekends. We got to know each other's families. To this day, my 90 year old grandmother will ask about Bob and Erick.

It's easy to get a little off track when you start strolling down memory lane, but the main reason for this post is to let the Gulick family know how much I appreciate their input in my life. I wasn't ignoring all that advice that you guys gave Bob. I may not have looked like it but I was paying attention and have put it to use.

One of my favorite stories about Bob's dad (and I'm sorry Veryl, I hope this doesn't get you into trouble), is when Bob and I were getting ready for a school dance. We thought we were pretty cool with our cologne and we bathed in it. Bob's dad walked in on us and made a face and told us that we were idiots and had no idea how to wear cologne. “You don't bathe in it,” he said. “Here's how a man wears cologne.” He then snatched one of the bottles and said. “You're going to a dance, right?” We said that we were. He then asked “Where is a girls head at when you're dancing?” He then put one drop of cologne on each of his shoulders. “You put one drop, not half the bottle, on each shoulder so she smells it but doesn't drown in it.” Then, with a wink he grinned and put another drop of cologne on his finger and pulled up his shirt and swiped it right underneath his belly button. “Put one drop right there too in case you get lucky.” He laughed and put the bottle down and walked out of the room. Bob and I laughed so hard I thought we were going to cry, but I promise you, we took his advice. I don't wear cologne much these days, but when I do, it's only three, well-placed drops.

Bob and I don't get to talk as much as I'd like us to, but it's one of those rare relationships where, when we do, it's as if we've been talking every day. When the news came down about my cancer, he contacted me immediately and our contact has been much more frequent lately. I have two biological brothers and two or three other guys who I call brothers and Bob is certainly one of those guys. If we lived closer, I'm sure that we would spend a lot of time together, but as it is, we have to rely on phone calls and facebook messages and the occasional visit.

I want to thank the Gulick family. Not just Bob, but his parents too. Whether they know it or not, they helped raise me and shape me.

This particular post is hard to write because every time I think I'm done, I think of three other things that I feel like I should have mentioned. I'll cut it off here though. Bob knows how I feel about him and I think that's enough for both of us.

I Will Win.