Being Real

This is a picture of my very special friend, Reed Monroe. He was like 84 years old in the this picture and I was 18. I met him at McDonald's when I was 16. I worked there for 2 years from the age 16 to 18. It didn't take them long at McDonald's to put me in the lobby as the hostess.
I guess because I loved to talk to people (I sucked at filling orders) and that is what I did out there in the lobby....cleaned up after others and blabbed to them. I used to meet the most interesting people in the lobby. All kinds of people because the restaurant was located right off of I-71.
Anyway, above is my friend Reed that I met in the lobby. He used to come in every night for dinner and we really got to know each other. Soon after, he would write down my schedule on a matchbook and would come for all of his meals whenever I was working. He was a very lonely man who rented a room from this lady that he never talked to . He had no kids and his wife left him when he was like 40 years old. He was retired for many years after I met him and worked for fun at the Sharon Country Club......a private golfing country club where women were not allowed entrance. I used to tell him that was very degrading to women.
He used to bring me these huge cookies from there......like a dozen at a time.
They were so good.
Anyway, during the 2 years of him eating dinner there (he ate least 3-4 evenings per week,) we became very good friends. We would go out to dinner sometimes....he would never let me treat. Sometimes he would meet my parents and I out for brunch on Sundays.
He got to even know my girlfriends. He had a mutual birthday with my friend Sherri, December 18th. He would even send her a birthday card every year. He even took me and my girlfriends out to dinner.....one time it was like 8 of my friends and Reed. HE was just a really sweet and caring person who was very lonely.
When I resigned from McDonald's just after I graduated from high school and went to work at the Auditor's office for the summer before I went to college, we continued our friendship.
He would pick me up at the court house and we would go to lunch or sometimes I would take him home and fix him lunch at my house. Everyday we ate lunch together, he would Always would bring me a quart of strawberries.....I loved strawberries. He used to buy us auto lotto tickets every week too.....we were always going to be millionaires together.
Anyway, when I went away to college, he wrote me weekly and sent me the most beautiful cards. I would go out to dinner with him during holiday breaks and during the summer months. but during my sophomore year of college he got really sick with an exacerbation of rheumatoid arthritis. He ended up moving to Kentucky to live near a niece that could help him. We kept in touch less and less and his handwriting got really hard to read.
Then one day during the spring of 1988, I was getting ready to work night shift, and I got a call from his niece that Reed had passed away.
I will never forget him......he was a very special person in my life. One day, about six or seven years ago after going out to dinner for my mom's birthday, we stopped into my old McDonald's to all get an ice cream cone. I asked if I could give the kids a tour of the place. since it was empty on a Saturday night, they gave us a tour. They told us that they were ripping down that building and a new one was almost completed and would open.......guess when...... Wed. December 18th.
I just got the chills from head to toe.....that was Reed's birthday. I know there are no coincidences in this world .......only mysteries..........and I love to be in AHHHHHH of all the mysteries.

Hope you like the quote below.
love,
Michele

Generally, by the time you are Real,
most of your hair has been loved off,
and your eyes drop out
and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.
But these things don’t matter at all,
because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly,
except to people who don’t understand.
— Margery Williams,

The Velveteen Rabbit