In 2006 I was urged by a friend of mine in the arts to meet
her with a large group of possible investors for her movie. Mind you I hate the
city. I am a country bumpkin. Going into the city for me is worse than having an
old wisdom tooth pulled out without any anesthesia. Trust me I know. Been there
done that.
However, for a friend who I wanted to see succeed. And her
journey in being a writer and filmmaker—I saw it as a noble task. She was an
incredibly hard worker. So, I forged ahead driving over the GWB and arrived near
the Empire State Building, which I’d never been that close to before this day
since 1966. Yeah, that’s a long ass time.
So, here I was after I’d given my valet key to the parking
garage attendant—always a scary proposition for me. I arrived out of the garage
walked a block, looked around. I made visual notes of exactly what everything
looked like. I held the address on a piece of paper, stared at the paper then
looked up at the clear star-lit night sky. I breathed and realized I didn’t die
crossing over the GWB. Sorry, but it’s a big bridge with its cacophony essence.
I walked a block then looked at the piece of paper in my
hand. Next thing I knew I’d arrived at the building. I called my friend on my
cell phone and surprisingly she answered. I received final instructions on my Mission
Impossible. The next adventure was finding the get-together inside the building.
I thought to listen for the noise of a slew of people. Unless I was in an
elevator then I was screwed. Don’t get me wrong. I might be a fatalist as a
brain surgeon once deemed me. However, I consider myself a realistic the glass
is half-full thinker a la carte some phobias.
Finally, I heard the noise and followed it down the hall and
was greeted by my filmmaking friend. There were nearly thirty people there and
I wasn’t considered late. Thank God! She
introduced me to some people. Then others who I knew there chatted briefly with
me. My friend made the rounds again after I’d been there for about thirty
minutes drinking water. As everyone else was having a not so bland beverage.
She introduced me to a man whose family was deeply embedded
in the publishing industry. I’d just finished my first guidebook and gotten
back into my writing regularly. The man’s family publishing business was about
100 years old and now this man was the great-grandson who’d taken over part of
the reins. The company had been incredibly successful with children’s books,
that to this day are still considered great reading material—to the point where
nearly every adult alive today in the U.S. shares the joy of the characters of
one author’s books with their children.
So, here we stood near a corner by a window. He began his
fourth glass of wine. As he was terribly honest with me. And I on my second
bottle of water. I asked about his business and authors he knew before he
started to sip his fourth glass of wine. Then somehow I got him talking about
his one daughter who he’d just taken in the car for one of her first drives
with him. Now I understood the fourth glass of wine he delicately sipped.
I heard the woes of a middle-aged man now in the throes of
having a teenaged daughter learning to drive. I was more than ten years behind
his parental dilemma. He had been teaching her with a stick-shift vehicle. Then
he paused, “I can’t believe I’m sharing this with you.” I nodded and said, “My
husband I do that. It’s valuable information. I have two daughters.”---Jody-Lynn
Reicher
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