A Measure of a True Friend

It was Thursday, the day before our trip to Madrid. We had seven cases full of video production equipment that we needed to register with U.S. Customs in order that we would not be charged a duty on them when we brought them back into the country. Editor was slammed to the wall with another project he had to get done before the end of the day, and he had to get home to take care of some errands that afternoon, as well as some the next day, as he was not coming in to the office, but rather going straight to the airport to catch our 4:00 flight.

Editor is a year older than I am. He came on board here about three years ago after a long stint as a freelancer with us. He had been a co-owner of a video production business with two other guys until that business went tits up, and officially folded about a year ago. He’s had a rough go of it financially and is under a lot of pressure before he even gets to work each day. He and I had a rough start, he thinking I didn’t like him, but he’s a really funny guy who has a colorful past with rich stories that he tells with such comic flair that people listening to him are in stitches from laughing so hard. Over the years he’s been on staff, we’ve formed a decent relationship, and I’ve considered him a friend rather than just a co-worker.

I had originally intended to make the trip to the Customs office in the morning, but there were a few items still undetermined, and I was procrastinating a little bit. I had planned to pick up the matador costume on Thursday, as well, but the shop doesn’t open until 11:00. As most of the morning slipped out of my grasp, I decided that I would make the Customs run right after lunch. Editor was a little concerned with how much time it was going to take me because he had hoped to head home by 2:00, and I couldn’t tell him how long it was going to take me.

I left to go home for lunch. It’s a ten-minute drive for me to get to my apartment from the office. I’m then literally about three minutes from the Northwest Tollway, which is practically a direct shot, 20-minute drive to the airport and the area where the U.S. Customs office is located. On my way home, Producer called me and told me that Owner (of the company) insisted that we bring the bulky, heavy power transformer with us, which meant that we would have to cough up another case to put it in. So I hurried through my lunch and headed back to the office where I looked over the power transformer and determined that there was no serial number on it, so therefore no need to register it with Customs, and therefore my return to the office was a trip — and time — wasted.

Then I left the office around 1:30 with only a vague memory of how to get to the Customs office, though a very clear memory that around the same time last year I had one hell of a time finding it! After wasting about 15 minutes trying to jar my memory, I received a phone call from Editor asking me how it was going and how soon I would be back with his laptop and the cases he needed to carry to the airport the next day. I told him I was having trouble finding the Customs office and, depending on if the officer wanted to look at every last item, worst case was two hours.

Editor swore. Not necessarily at me, but at his dilemma. “I gotta get out of here. I got things I need to do!”

I said, “I know. There’s just no telling how long it’s going to take.”

“God! I wish you had left this morning, like you said!”

Editor was getting very agitated and impatient. I felt badly for him that the day hadn’t gone as I had hoped. I finally used directory assistance to call the Customs office and got directions on how to get there. Add to it all the rain from the tropical depression that had been Hurricane Gustav and the eighth straight hour of steady rain that had fallen on us, which made everything move at about 2/3 speed. I got to the service window at Customs and faced a very young, fairly timid-looking officer.

Last year, performing the same task before a trip, I had arrived at the same Customs office under the mistaken impression that I just needed the serial numbers of the items we were taking overseas, and not the items themselves. A youngish veteran officer had scolded me, saying that I had to show him I had the items, otherwise how would he know we didn’t have a nefarious plan where my henchmen overseas just told me the serial numbers of the items I was going to illegally import into the country? So I had to return to the office, get all the gear and bring it back to Customs where I returned to the window and faced a different, older, wizened officer who, while I waited to ask him where to bring all the gear, looked over the forms I had filled out in front of the other officer, and then he signed the forms, said, “Thank you!” and sent me on my way! He never even looked at the stuff! BOY! was I pissed off!

With the rain pouring down as it was, I was close to actual prayer that the young officer would just rubber stamp the forms and send me on my way. I could tell he wanted to. He didn’t want to make me go out in the rain to get all that stuff and, most of all, he didn’t want to stand there and check off every last item of stuff on my list! He looked out at the rain. He looked over his shoulder at his superiors. He looked at the list. He heaved a big sigh. “You have all the stuff here?”

“Yes,” said I.

He looked at his superiors again, who were otherwise oblivious to him. He heaved another sigh. “Okay. You’re gonna have to bring it all in here.”

Crap.

As I unloaded the gear onto a cart on the first trip out to the car, unsuccessfully trying to avoid getting soaked by Gustav, my phone rang. It was Editor asking me again how much longer I would be.

“They’re gonna look at everything,” I told him. I looked at my watch: 2:30. “My guess, it’s another twenty to thirty minutes before I’m headed back to the office.”

Meltdown.

“AAAAAAAAHHHGOD DAMN IT! I got SHIT to do! Jesus fucking CHRIST!” He ranted for several more seconds. “This is fucking up my whole day! You should’ve done this in the morning!”

He was my friend, but now I was pissed off. I didn’t have to take all the gear to Customs. The gear that he was waiting for I could have left for him to take to Customs on his own. I was the one standing in the rain. I was the one unloading and reloading the car for two trips into the Customs office. I was the one driving with the idiots on the road who acted as though they had never seen drops of water falling from the sky.

I bit my tongue and said none of that. I simply said, “I’m sorry.”

Silence.

“Well,” I said, “the longer you keep me on the phone, the longer it’s gonna take me to get back.”

>CLICK<

He hung up on me! One of my biggest pet peeves! You can get angry with me. You can say mean things to me. You can even accuse me of lying, incompetence or apathy, but hanging up on me signals your unwillingness to communicate, and is just plain fucking rude!

The Customs officer verified all the serial numbers with the items that bore them in the first batch of cases. I returned to the car, swapped the cleared cases with the uncleared and returned to the officer. He verified everything there, and I reloaded the car and headed back to the office. It was just after 3:00, and I was seething.

I worked my way to the Northwest Tollway and immediately found myself socked right in the middle of a huge, Gustav-coated traffic jam. As I crawled along in traffic I had several imaginary conversations with Editor, alternately speaking calmly or screaming at him while I glared out the windshield. I was gonna let him have it with both barrels when I got to the office: “Since when is it all about YOU? Who the fuck was traipsing around in the rain, dragging your shit all over the place, getting the gear cleared for YOU? I could’ve left this for you to do on your own, and THEN what would you do with your precious fucking time?!”

My windshield was practically dripping with saliva.

I got to the office and carried his laptop bag in and set it down inside the front door. I found him in an edit suite talking to one of the other editors. He saw me and rolled his eyes and raised his arms and slapped his thighs, wordlessly saying, “Finally! What the hell took you so long?!”

I thought the better of saying everything I had come up with on the drive from the Customs office, as there were co-workers all over the place. And it was probably best that I wait until I had calmed down or there might have been fists and a call to the police! So I said bluntly, “Your bag is up front,” and I headed back out to the car to pull it around back to unload the rest of the gear, forgetting that he was taking half the cases home with him.

He followed me out to the car and was being all nice and asking me calmly which cases I wanted him to take. I told him that it was whatever he could fit into his compact sedan. As it was still raining, he backed his car to within a few feet of mine. I opened the rear hatch of my car, an SUV, and the handtrucks that I had used to load the cases into and out of the Customs office, and which I had stowed on top of the cases in the car, slid out unexpectedly. I reached up reflexively with my left hand and tried to stop the handtrucks, but the bottom lift blade(?) caught my thumb and gouged a chunk of skin out of it, as well as crashing into my right thigh. My anger boiled over to rage and I grabbed the handtrucks and flung it across the parking lot with a roar.

He loaded his car with all he could take, and I put the (now slightly damaged) handtrucks back into mine and pulled around to the loading dock, where I unloaded the rest of the gear into our warehouse.

The next morning there was a mild panic as Owner called from San Diego telling me to bring yet more crap (the infamous disappearing teleprompter case!) with me to Madrid. As our client insisted on booking our tickets, we wound up flying on American Airlines, with which neither Editor nor I have any status. And, with all the new airline rules, we were limited to a maximum of five bags each. So now, with the power transformer and the teleprompter monitors added, I was maxed out at five bags. I wasn’t sure how many he had, so I called him.

I was still feeling a little pissed off at him, and I intended to confront him at the airport about the previous day’s incident, only calmly. I intended to tell him that I value our friendship, and I realize that he was acting out of frustration, but he can’t treat me that way and not expect me to be upset or angry with him. But at the moment, I was still ticked. He answered the phone and, trying only to sound matter-of-fact, I told him of the extra case we had to carry, anticipating him to groan and moan about it. Instead, he said, “Knock it off with the attitude! I got enough shit going on right now, and if you’re gonna give me attitude, I swear to god I’ll hang up the phone.”

I said, “What attitude? I’m just telling you about the new wrinkle. We have to carry more crap!”

That defused the bombs each of us was ready to lob at each other, and I strengthened my resolve to have it out with him at the airport as civilly as I could muster.

A quick check-in and $650 in excess baggage fees later, I waited for Editor to get to the airport to help him with bags if he needed it. He wound up checking in at a different counter than I had expected him to, and only realized he was already checked in when I saw a skycap wheel past me on a cart the gear Editor had checked.

I went through security and made my way to the gate. I saw Editor there and I took a huge breath and walked to him. I sat down.

And Editor said, “Hey, before I say anything else I just want to say that I’ve been under a ton of stress — and it’s no excuse, I know — but I let it get out of control yesterday, and I acted selfishly and said things I never should have said, and I held you responsible for things that were out of your control. So, I apologize for acting the way I did yesterday. There’s no excuse for the way I treated you, and I’m sorry.” It was heartfelt, it was sincere, and he looked in my eyes the entire time.

For a few seconds I just blinked at him and resisted the urge to say, “Wow!”

Then I said, “I’m really glad you said that.” I gave a version of my “I value our friendship” speech, and I told him that it really means a lot that he faced up and apologized.

And I don’t think I can emphasize enough how really much it means to me. It takes quite a lot of introspection of a person to take a step back from who one is or what one has been doing and acknowledge that one has acted selfishly or boorishly toward someone else. It certainly takes a lot more than most people, it seems, are willing to give. Too many of us think only of ourselves and say or do things that unnecessarily hurt others. We even sometimes know that what we’ve said or done has caused harm or pain to someone, and it even bothers us that we’ve done it, but we just don’t have the balls to admit it and own up to it and apologize. Editor is not an abusive person. He’s a great guy, fun to be around. Like anyone else, he has his weak moments, but like no one else — or few I’ve known — he has the presence of mind to know when his weaknesses affect those around him, and he has the self-respect to make amends to those he has let down.

At a point where I thought our friendship had been dealt a serious blow, I came away feeling instead that it had been greatly strengthened.

When I have my weak moments and I have let down those around me, may I have the ability to recognize those moments with the same fortitude and dignity.