I love these two people.

I loved them back in high school when we laughed more than we cried and sang more than we stewed. But as time has carried us along on our convoluted paths, intersecting sometimes for an hour or a day, my love for them has ripened.

One of the bridges between us has been their honesty about their problems.

 

It is mildly enjoyable to have acquaintances that are perfect, like Keira Knightly, or Elizabeth Taylor. I say that not because I am actually friends with them, but I have a cousin once removed who got married and Keira came to the ceremony, and my son did install a surveillance camera for Liz which practically makes them friends and I am after all his mother and her cousin. Not only that my niece was invited to an event that Obama was invited to. She did not actually go since the cover charge was more than a month's rent but still. 

 

Back to problems and how great they are.

 

Have you ever had a conversation with someone whose biggest complaint is the shade of their living room wallpaper? I did once, and found it hard to launch into my own issues which would have made juicy material for a low budget rag if they knew about my tight connections with Keira and Liz. With Cal and Mag I never feel that way. Their problems are always much more gargantuan than mine, and I end up feeling great by comparison.

 

Take their latest move for instance. They packed up all their belongings into a truck and handed the driver their new address in Canada. The driver mentioned this to his boss who found some loophole in the contract that says the driver of a truck going over the border must be a citizen of that country. The trouble is he has to be a citizen of this country up until the border so unless you hire someone with borderline personality you cannot move the truck an inch. So they arrived in Canada with the contents of one suitcase which was meant to last a few days and ended up being their sum total possessions for six weeks. People gossiped when their attire at church so closely resembled what they wore to dig ditches.

 

Then there have been controversies around food. For awhile Maggie wanted to be fruitarians, and I visited their home to see no less than eight bushels of mangoes, apples, pineapples, bananas and kiwis where the bread should have been on the counter. Calvin had conflicting feelings about this, which drove him to make multiple covert trips to McDonalds for carbs and fat. 

 

Then there is the simple fascination around being with Maggie. Any time of the year she knows six people who have a birthday that day. I was with her once in a crowd of about thirty people and she glanced around and named twelve of their birthdays and several of their relatives' as well. 

 

Finally there is the rapid inconsistency of Calvin's employment to foster endearment. He has been an electrician, therapist, psychology instructor, farmer, has sold cranes, peddled urns for dead people's crumbs and most recently become a man of the cloth. Who could not love a guy who dabbles in every shade of gainful occupation?

 

As I said before, I love Cal and Mag. And what is more surprising still, I think they love boring ol' me too.