Adios, Mrs. Cabbage Patch

If nothing else comes out of this book, it did at least spark a reunion last night with my old friend Bick, whom I hadn’t seen in seven years. We lost touch after he got married, or more specifically, after he overheard me tell Drew I thought his wife resembled a Cabbage Patch Kid. To be fair, she did. But it still wasn’t the nicest thing to say. I thought he was in the men’s room, but it turned out someone had thrown up in the hall outside the restrooms, so he abandoned his urinal quest and was standing right behind me when I said it.

Imagine this doll with green eyes and it's
almost a dead ringer for Bick's ex-wife.

Anyway, I wanted to ask Bick’s permission before including his email replies in the book, so first I had to track him down. Which would have been easier if I hadn’t deleted Facebook. The only other social media he does is LinkedIn, and his bio there was three years out of date. I finally had to call his mom, who, judging by the change in her tone of voice after I identified myself, still blames me for Bick not getting into med school. (He’s the programming director for a Christian radio station, so you judge for yourself just how far he missed his calling in the surgical world.) It took me three days to finally work up the nerve to call him. Well, most of that time I was trying to talk Drew into doing it for me, just in case Bick was still hacked off about the Cabbage Patch comment. Even after I washed dishes three nights in a row, Drew refused. He just kept saying, “Grow up, dude.”

So I finally dialed the number … and Bick couldn’t have been more pleasant. He sounded genuinely happy to hear from me. Turns out he and Mrs. Cabbage Patch got divorced last year. She had an emotional affair with a guy in her office. Which turned physical. So a standard affair, with the emotional and the physical and the sneaking and plus a whopping lie about a business trip to San Jose, for which Bick even drove her to the airport. In the end, he found out about it on Facebook. Someone she worked with posted a picture of her and her work hubby getting chummy at the office Christmas party. Bick was already suspicious by then. When he confronted her, she didn’t even try to deny it. So he no longer minds that I insulted her, and we actually shared a laugh over it.

We (Drew and I) met him up at Conagliatelli’s in Greenwood. Not a lot has changed there since we were in high school. The video games have been updated, but the pizza is as good as ever. We sat in the same corner booth we always used to sit at. Bick had to run after a couple of hours, because he’s got a brand new puppy at home. His wife got the dog in the split, which hardly seems fair. Bick’s too nice. He should have hired a tougher lawyer to win the custody fight. At least there were no human kids to mess up. I bet their dog will come through it all without too much long-term emotional damage.