MAGGI PICAYUNE

Today is my friend Phil’s birthday. Rumor has it he’s celebrating down in Orlando with his family. My personal guess is that he’s there to indulge in his new hobby of SCUBA diving; he told me all about it when we got together at Jose’s wedding. Facebook is the only way I know about his current activities because he’s not big on calls, e-mail or running his own blog like yours truly.

How we met was a pretty funny story (or a demonstration of how small Marquette’s student population is) but I want to merge today’s birthday wish with the Summer of 1989 and a smidgeon of his 21st birthday.

Set the Wayback machine to June, 1989 Sherman…

By now Summer was cruising along pretty well. I had moved into my permanent apartment at 13th and Kilbourn. The paint crew gig was steady while I learned a little Mandarin from my teammate Xinyi. He and the other Chinese guys were rather calm over the Tiananmen Square stuff too,

Matters continued to solidify between Carrie and me; on the girlfriend front. I was also developing my new friendship with Lee during my shifts at Schroeder’s front desk.

On the current/older friendship front, things were great. Paul and Helen returned to their respective home cities which was disappointing but Phil and Jose stuck around which was a nice counterweight. This interesting duo were my neighbors at Mashuda during my junior year and we had all become part of each other’s inner clique despite Phil being the bane of my Theology 001 class a year earlier. Having some continuity was great, especially after the boredom I endured in 1987.

While I moved out of the dorms to have my own apartment, Jose and Phil scored a sublet for the Summer through an acquaintance of Jose’s. It worked perfectly for them; they would be returning to Mashuda in last August. Phil could take a couple classes during the break and I have no recollection why Jose decided to stay in Milwaukee. I was only grateful for the company. It helped that Phil was allowed to have a car for the interim too. Him having wheels came to the rescue quite often:

• The night Jose had to buy a VCR because the acquaintance said some other person could borrow it for the Summer.
• This same evening resulted in me buying a Nintendo NES to indulge in my childhood dream to finally own a videogame system. I was so deprived as a child.
• Drives to the East Side to get movies from this new rental chain called Blockbuster Video. I’m confident we manage to squeeze in a side trip to Kopp’s near Glendale Avenue or Napoleon’s game store in Shorewood.
• Picking up Jose’s Batman poster at East Side Disc which he won in a raffle.

The trick was to achieve these errands before Phil had to report to his seasonal job driving a delivery van for the Milwaukee Sentinel. How he managed to spend the bulk of the Summer sleeping all day, waking around late afternoon, attending a class, going to work, staying alert until 5 AM and then repeating this for almost 12 weeks impressed me.

One of my strongest memories of Phil involved our Friday afternoons. Paint crew would wrap up at 330 PM and I think Jose’s language lab “job” around 4 PM (I use quotes because I think he got to spend most of his day watching TV). I’d hurry back to my place, clean up, change clothes and meet Phil and Jose at their apartment. Phil was usually awake or getting ready when I arrived. Then we’d pile into his car to get our weekly groceries at the Pick n’ Save on Capitol Drive. Most of my choices were based upon the coupons I received in the mail or what I remembered as practical from my trial-by-fire Summer of 1988. Jose had a thing for ham sandwiches so I know we usually had to make a stop at the deli counter. Phil however was always hellbent on pulling off his weekly, juvenile custom of stealing a piece of candy from the Brach’s bins. He’d do this with a devilish look on his face as Jose and me watched with a combination of irritation and panic; the last thing we needed was Phil getting busted for shoplifting and being stranded on the North Side on a Friday evening. I’m confident he did this as a way to piss us off more than to show us what an eccentric he was. After learning more about the grocery store business from Somara’s days at HEB, I have a suspicion Pick n’ Save’s loss-prevention department probably classified Phil’s stunt as a nuisance, thus nothing worth their effort as he did this every Friday. How I wished Brach’s kept their donation box to drop a few cents into so we’d be covered for good measure.

This brings me back to Jose’s wedding. When Phil told me all about his newfound interest in SCUBA diving it brought back the memory his Candy Robin Hood antics. It made sense though. His asinine deed was a hint of willingness to try more daring things I know Jose and I would never try yet Phil has before he turned 40: run a marathon, SCUBA diving outside the US and getting married in the Nineties. For some reason I keep thinking Phil has tried skydiving but I might be imaging this. Hopefully he can verify or dispute it.

Now his twenty-first birthday was a bit of a blur and I was sober. The bulk of us didn’t celebrate too hard because we had work the next day. Phil on the other hand had the evening off from the paper, thus we guaranteed he’d be a wreck by morning.

If you know Phil, drop him a line through his Facebook wall or page or whatever they have. Maybe you can offer him a virtual peppermint or butterscotch to remind him of his “reckless” youth.