Happy Birthday, MacGyver! and thanks for something special

Well, really, tomorrow is Richard Dean Anderson's birthday. I have no idea what date the fictional character, MacGyver, has as his natal day, and I don't really care so much. In fact, I hadn't committed Anderson's personal data to memory, either. I'm not some freaky obsessed fan. I was just setting up the next Fortune Teller post and came across his name. I've enjoyed a couple of his tv series over the years, and all, but what this is really all about is friendships not forgotten.

More than twenty years ago, my folks and I moved to Virginia, settling eventually near Williamsburg as Mom and I found work in the historic area, in costume. Two doors down from my parents' townhouse was a crazy lady. It was destiny. Two households Chock Full O' Nuts, as it were, chatting across a lawn about unusual nonsense.

The crazy lady and I had much more in common than simple insanity and became fast friends. She was always welcome at my house and that of my parents, and her family welcomed me at passover. I served as her proxy in the classroom for a year or two as she was undergoing treatments for a painful disability (substitute teacher on a very regular basis). We were fans of the same sorts of music, enjoyed the same types of art and literature, and were especially fond of the then-new series, MacGyver (although she felt more attracted to its star than I did -- at that point, I just liked the stories and the inventive nature of the show and its main character). Eventually, we made it a point to get together to watch the show, and best of all, to make fun of it when one particular director spent too much camera time on Richard Dean Anderson's posterior in those 1980s tight jeans... we were not grownups. We were disappointed when Anderson started moving into the baggy pants phase.

I haven't seen or heard from my friend since the early 1990s. Nevertheless, she had a rather deep impact on me. I discovered I enjoy working with children with all levels of ability, I enjoy laughing aloud at television series even when they're not intentionally funny (especially when they're not intentionally funny!), and for twenty years I've had the policy that I go nowhere without my Swiss Army knife, Mackie Messer.... There is more, but this blog doesn't hold syrup.

But, aside from all the other serious and silly things we did together, there is one which refuses to die a natural death. This month I've been pet-sitting, again, for one of my best friends from childhood, and a picture keeps burbling up from the deep, from a little book we once put together, 50 Ways to Use Your Duct Tape. The image, from a duct-tape bound "Little-Golden-Book" sized work, was rather like this:

I still have the book and the duct tape. I'd trade it all, any day, for word from an old friend, though.

Duct tape went a lot of places, in the 1980s. Friendship went a lot more.