My friend A. called from Lumberton, North Carolina around 11 am yesterday to say he’d get to Princeton around 6 pm. Having lived nine years in Chapel Hill, I knew he wasn’t going to make it, particularly on July 3rd. He didn’t get here until 8 pm. He was rattled from the traffic and needed my help in the parking garage. “What’s OCD?” he asked after I commented on his checking the trunk latch, every door and and every window in his car twice before walking away.
He recovered quickly during our meal at Winberies, which lasted until after midnight. We stayed up until 2 am in the apartment arguing philosophy and religion. No yelling. We both just talk loudly. Luckily Anne Mei was at a friend’s house. Things only became testy whenever he would put me in a “Hindu-Buddhist” stereotype he had, or when I challenged him for saying he was a materialist who believed he had a soul that would survive his death.
I did learn one eternal verity this weekend. An 82 year old man who has lived alone all his life never puts the toilet seat back down.