80PTS: Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church struck just the right spiritual chord with me. Their powerfully charismatic leader brought the intent of scriptures alive and delivered them to relevancy of modern life. He also turnd mission-to-action, sometimes having the congregation sit for ten minutes until a volunteer was found for a Thursday night homeless shelter shift.
Through FAPC I signed up for Habitat for Humanity. I waited for a “skilled” day so that I was more likely to wire a house than clear a lot. One icy Saturday I found myself deep in Queens at a multi-home build. I had brought my own hammer, a $300, wonderfully weighted beauty that got little use outside of the occasional hang-a-picture swing. “Do you know how to drywall?” asked the coordinator. “Rusty, but adequate”, I overstated my competence. “Go see Gary in building 3”. Soon enough Gary had me cutting and posting sheetrock, eschewing the nail gun for my great hammer (it deserved a name, like a medieval sword, but it remained eponymous). Casual conversation flowed. Gary trickled out with “I do cartoon work”. From my time in the MTV Animation Studio I new enough to dig in…”Are you an illustrator, or inker, or in-betweener?”. “Storyline and illustrator”. “Strip or block”. “Strip”. “Observational, political, funny”. “Political”. “Local?”. “National”. After a couple of different dives across the next two hours we finally go to “it’s called Doonesbury”. It seems his name wasn’t “Gary”, it was “Garry”, as in “Garry Trudeau”. My first response was “so not local, but in 30,000 papers…” to which he jokingly replied “closer to 50,000”.
We moved to the third story and the conversation moved to his inability to get his 17 year old twins “Ross and Rachel” to volunteer. He was quick to point out that their naming pre-dated “Friends” by 15 years. I told Garry I was graduated from Northwestern and he perked up — both twins were mid-application to Northwestern and we talked about what unique NU features they might add to their stories. I knew he had attended Yale and I asked if his wife had an alma mater. “Indiana”, he shared. “Oh, I’m from Cincinnati. A third of my high school went to IU, split between media and engineering.” “My wife did broadcast journalism.” “Oh, what did she do after college”. “She’s Jane Pauley”. “Oh, that’s a pretty good gig.”
We went to McDonalds for lunch and he brought up an article he had recently read that was occupying his mind on “acquired narcissism syndrome”, or the inability of celebrities surrounded by sycophants to form normal human relationships. From my entertainment consulting days we went round and round until we found someone he “knew” and someone I had worked with and delved into their specific lack of relationships-with-truth. We finished the third floor that afternoon, thanked each other for a unexpected combination of philanthropy and good conversation, and parted ways.
It was before the days of cell phone and email ubiquity, and so there was no awkward exchange of connections. Later it would serve as a good model to illustrate that some experiences and chance meetings are best self-contained in the day and lose significance in “we should connect”.