God rest ye, merry gentlemen.
Ah, Christmastime is finally here. (Well, actually, it was here two months ago, when Walgreens filled an entire aisle with Yuletide crap at the same they put up the Halloween section.) Sharing the intimate thrill of Christmas with my wife Suzie is something I look forward to all year long. And this year was no different. The aroma of sausage balls filled the air as we spent the weekend after Thanksgiving adorning the tree with our hodgepodge of ornaments and decking the rest of the house with red and green holiday tchotchkes.
Like everyone out there, I've got a lot of happy memories from Christmaseses past. Some of them are completely materialistic and selfish, like remembering all the awesome toys Santa brought us as kids. (Legos forever!) Some of them are goofy and fun, like the Saturday I helped my friend Jimmy, both of us wearing floppy Santa hats, deliver poinsettias for his mother's flower shop. Some of those recollections are actually meaningful, great moments I spent enjoying a cold winter night, a crackling fireplace, and the glow of the tree with the special people in my life.
And then there are those holiday memories that aren't so great.
One thing the human brain is incredibly good at, is stringing together random associations at the speed of light. For instance, you might glance at an orange construction cone, and before you know it, your gray matter has gone down a mental rabbit hole. “Construction cone... candy corn... Halloween... autumn... football... Joe Namath... pantyhose.” You can't stop it. Once that first neuron fires, the way-back dominoes fall in rapid succession. And you can't control where your mind winds up.
Unfortunately, despite all the happy memories I’ve accumulated, thoughts of Christmas often take me down one of those unpleasant mental tunnels. Every time I see a Christmas elf, or a Christmas cookie, or a Christmas parade, it's inevitable that my brain will carry me away on the same journey. It's a memory chain that I can't escape, a series of interconnected remembrances that ties together several random things: my second job in California, a dear friend I almost ignored, and the wonderful Yuletide orchestrations of...
ARTURO DELMONI & FRIENDS.
I guess I didn't realize what I was getting into when I decided to leave my cushy Silicon Valley job in the summer of 1998 to go work with my friend David at his new gig, a startup focused on creating a network-based software update system.
I mean, I'd certainly heard of legendarily famous companies that sprang from bedrooms and garages to become global powerhouses, corporate giants like Apple and Atari. But I didn't really grok how hard-scrabble those companies were in their early days. So on the first day of my new job, I found that I had traded my state-of-the-art computer equipment and sunny Palo Alto office for a collection of partially-assembled custom built PCs littering a cramped cubicle in San Ramon, on the sweltering side of the East Bay. I was still making a decent salary, thank God, but the entire vibe of my career had changed. There was no more big-company security. Me and my coworkers were racing against time, with very limited funds and resources, to beat our competitors to the brass ring.
That kind of work environment is stressful enough. But if I had been surrounded by awful people, it would have been soul-crushing. Luckily, over the course of my first few months toiling away, I discovered that my new corporate family was a delightful crew of diverse personalities. There was Ken, the finance/accounting guy, who, with his love of grilling, pinball, and wrestling, was the complete opposite of a button-down numbers nerd. There was Frank (not that Frank), a gifted programmer who loved having everyone over for boxing on pay-per-view. There was Nick the salesman, whose infectious laugh could be heard from the other side of the office. Eventually we added Harry from operations, Chris from the programming team, and Jessica from sales to our little clique. All of them were quirky, fun, and gifted. They made the looooong days fly by.
And then... there was Dale.
As a mature adult, I do my best to be an open-minded person. But I have to admit that, back in my early thirties, when I was still rife with brazen stupidity, I was a young punk who was quick to judge people at first sight. That's how I found myself looking down my nose at Dale during his interview. This short, balding, fireplug of a guy who looked like he was in his mid-to-late fifties thought he could get a job on our technical support team? There was no way he could have any experience with T1 lines or remote network access. He was so.. so... so old! Yeah, sure, there was this youthful impishness in his smile. And yeah, okay, there was a hint of playfulness in the corners of his eyes. And, all right, yes, he answered all the technical questions correctly. But... but... but he was wearing a knit tie! I was no Tim Gunn, but even I knew those were out of style.
Oof. I had a hard time typing all that. I've been ashamed for years that I had all those icky opinions in my head back then. They sound so snarky and elitist and judgmental. So would it help lessen the impression of how awful I was, if I admit that eventually I ate crow? Like, KFC family-sized buckets of crow? Because in an incredibly short amount of time, Dale and I became soul brothers.
It's impossible to pinpoint exactly when we realized how much we enjoyed each others' company... it just sort of happened. The first time I can remember him stopping me dead in my tracks, however, was when he asked me what my mom got me for Christmas. Dale listened attentively, a big warm smile on his face, as I listed the shirts and books and other small things I'd received. When I was done, he said, “That sounds really great.” “Yeah, she sent me some good stuff,” I enthusiastically agreed. Then his friendly smile turned into that patented devilish grin of his, and he softly said, “It must be nice. My mom's dead.”
I was completely thrown. He had grabbed my happiness by the ankles and beat me over the head with it, Loki-style. Before I could gather my wits and stammer out a reply, he walked away, leaving me even more wrecked. It wasn't until hours later that he came back to my cubicle to admit to his joke. I was so relieved, I almost hugged him.
Once he had hit me with those impish qualities that I had seen in him during that first meeting, Dale and I were off to the races. When we weren't driving our coworker Jessica crazy with a daily battery of risqué jokes, or giggling at the absurdity of “monkfish brochettes” as a cafeteria menu option, or ogling the young women who staffed the insurance company on the ground floor, or sharing a beer while slagging our bosses for their increasingly bad business decisions, Dale and I were hard at work, doing our desperate best to make sure our little company didn't sink like a stone.
That hard work included going on the road for days at a time. For several months, a team that included me and Dale traveled throughout Utah, installing our networked software delivery system at the state colleges. And it was on those tedious trips that I really got to know Dale. I heard about his youth in the Northwest, where a horse kicked out his front teeth after he built a corral and stable in order to meet girls. I cringed when he explained the foot-long scar on his arm was the result of a Viet-Cong soldier slashing him in a surprise attack when he was in Vietnam. Let me tell you, this man had lived. Much more than me, that's for sure.
But it wasn't all deep, painful conversations. Dale was a consummate prankster, and it was an honor watching him work his magic. One his favorite things to do was to pull a waitperson aside and tell them that it was my birthday. As a result, I got a lot of half-hearted serenades, and even more free desserts. Then there was the time he chastised Ted, the other tech support guy, for choking up our office Internet access with every-millisecond requests for updates from the government's atomic clock program, by gifting him with a cheap plastic “atomic clock” which Ted threw away in a fit of embarrassed anger. And I got to watch him pull that “My mom is dead” routine on lots of other people. (Oddly enough, it was much funnier when it happened to someone else.)
Here was this deep, intelligent, funny man who had lived a life so completely different than mine... a man who patiently taught me his hardware and networking secrets... who showed me how to be kind to the good people and patient with the people who don't know any better... who started our every day working together with a visit to my cubicle and a friendly hello... and I almost wrote him off, based on nothing but visual prejudice.
I almost missed out on so much goodness. So much laughter. So much camaraderie.
And, most importantly, so much Christmas cheer.
Enjoying one of my free birthday desserts, complete with Turd Ferguson hat. Somewhere in Utah, 1999.
Let's rewind the clock a bit, to December of 1998.
That was the first year of my life that I didn't spend Christmas with my family. It wasn't because I didn't want to see them, honest. The second half of the year had been a big one for me. I quit my job in July. I toured through Europe for two weeks. I came back and went right into this new job that had me working six days a week (becoming seven days a week for almost a year). My long-term relationship with The Teacher came to a difficult but eventually mutually agreed-upon end. I moved back up into the hills of Berkeley. All that happened in about three months. When the dust finally settled, I realized I was beat.
After all that, I just didn't have it in me to brave the inconvenience and hassle of cross-country travel during the Christmas season. I needed some time to decompress. After breaking the bad news to my folks, I proceeded to spend the week between Christmas Eve and New Years Day doing my own thing. I slept in. I ate out, a lot. I roamed my new environment in the East Bay hills. I hiked almost every day. I took BART into San Francisco and explored the city. I had no schedule, I had no one to answer to, and I was getting paid for the vacation time. I gotta admit... I loved every minute of it.
And of course, there was music to be had. Just a healthy stroll from my new digs were three of the best record shops I've ever been to: Amoeba Music, Rasputin Records, and the sorely-missed Mod Lang. A couple of days after Christmas I threw on my coat, walked to downtown, and hit the stores.
It was in Amoeba that I discovered their huge rack of discounted, "please get this stuff out of our store" holiday music. Hundreds and hundreds of holiday CDs were sale priced at $2. That's a bargain, even if you're waging a nonexistent war on Christmas!
I was absentmindedly flipping through the colorful discs, when my comic-book-addled, four-color-sensitive brain spied a simple red and green cover, emblazoned with the title Rejoice! in a big crimson script. The disc was apparently a collection of traditional Christmas tunes, performed by some guy named Arturo Delmoni and his string quartet. It sounded unfussy. Elegant. Sophisticated. Festive. I was sold.
So I took home my new holiday treasure... and never listened to it.
What do you mean, that's crazy? Christmas was over! Why on earth would I listen to Christmas music after the big day was in my rearview mirror? I filed the CD on my shelf, telling myself I would pull it out sometime around the next Thanksgiving. So like the One Ring, my newfound Precious slept...
...until many months later, when it would hear its Master's call.
My cobbled-together work environment. I made magic happen with this setup!
And now let's jump forward, all the way to December of 1999.
At this point, I'd been slaving away for my employers for over a year. Day to day remained pretty much the same... long hours and very little sleep. There were, however, two big changes. Firstly, we had a delightful addition to our little group of misfits: Joan, Dale's partner, who came aboard as a graphic designer and web developer. Above and beyond her technical skills, she brought a dry wit and a love of sophisticated wordplay to the table.
The second big change was to the scope of my work, and it was a seismic shift. Thanks to the potential of financial profit due to the looming fears of Y2K, my initial project - creating Unix-based software delivery systems - had veered in an entirely different direction. I was now creating a Java applet that would interact directly with a user's PC to install a free Y2K-compatibility test. At the time, this level of browser-to-OS access was uncharted territory. So, to the detriment of my health and my then-relationship, I was in the office every day of the week, trying to figure it all out. Needless to say, I was becoming a frazzled mess.
The day before we broke for another week-and-a-half holiday vacation, I decided to bring my meager holiday music collection into the office, to give myself a comfortable soundtrack to work to. Unfortunately, my “collection” at the time consisted of exactly one CD: the Rejoice! album I'd purchased the year before. You know, the CD I had yet to listen to. But that didn't matter. I needed something Christmas-y to bring me a little comfort and joy. So I popped the disc into my beat-up boom box. I hit play.
Man alive, was it worth the year-long wait.
Rejoice! was exactly what I hoped it would be: a simple, elegant orchestration of familiar Yuletide standards. Songs like “Joy To The World”, “Silent Night”, “Good King Wenceslas”, and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” were beautifully interpreted by a classic string quartet ensemble. No percussion. No choir. No over-the-top production. Just New York-based classical violinist Arturo Delmoni and three other musicians lovingly performing short, precise versions of a full two dozen holiday tunes. (It was even recorded in a church!) When the CD ended on a sprightly rendition of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, I felt like I'd gotten my money's worth. And then some.
I was so happy with my new Christmas album, I decided to share it with the rest of the office. It was post-lunchtime on the last day before the break. No one was really working, right? (Well, other than me, obviously.) No one was going to be aggravated by some classy orchestral Christmas music floating through the air, were they? Figuring I was doing Santa's work, I propped my CD player on the corner of my cubicle wall. I went back to track one. I sat down, a big smile on my face. I love sharing music. And this music, at this time of the year, was definitely meant to be shared!
(Cue the sad trombone sound...)
Not thirty seconds into “Joy To The World”, the office's Debbie Downer, a leathery post-middle-aged woman who always wore wrist protectors, appeared in my cube doorway. With a Mr. Potter scowl darkening her face, she said to me, “Your music is bothering the office.”
I was stunned. Shocked. Saddened. All I had wanted to do was spread some Christmas cheer. But apparently, I did the wrong thing. A weak apology tumbled out of me as I pulled my boom box back down to my desk. “Debbie” didn't even thank me. She just turned in her Birkenstocks and shuffled back to her corner of the office. Her aura, her tone of voice, and her utter contempt for what I was trying to do completely destroyed my happy mood. I slumped in my chair, no longer feeling even a shred of the Christmas spirit that Rejoice! had filled me with. Bah, humbug.
That black cloud would have hung over my head for the rest of the afternoon, if my own Christmas elf hadn't showed up. Dale popped in to wish me a happy holiday, but he could instantly tell I was bummed. After I explained what had happened with Debbie, he asked why I'd stopped the music. My only answer was that I'd upset everyone in the entire office, or so I was told, and I felt terrible about it. Then that devilish grin appeared on his face.
“Fudge 'em”, he said.
(Except, in the best A Christmas Story tradition, he didn't say “fudge”.)
As I've mentioned countless times before, I'd been raised without any tools for handling interpersonal conflict. Over the years, thanks to the various relationship issues I'd gone through, I'd gotten a little better at defending myself. But it was still difficult to confront someone I didn't know that well when they came at me as if I were in the wrong. So Debbie's complaint, her overall Scrooge-like vibe, had freaked me out big-time.
Dale, however, didn't share my hang ups. He gently returned my boom box to its lofty perch and started the music again.
Sure enough, Debbie rematerialized. And she was not happy. “Your music is disturbing everyone in the office!” she barked. I was about to turn it off again, when Dale piped up. “Well, it's not disturbing me. And it's not disturbing Don. So I guess it's not disturbing everyone, is it?” And he looked her right in the eyes. Stared her down, with the most gentle, friendly, warm smile I'd ever seen him give.
There was a long, tense, High Noon showdown moment where neither one of them moved. But Dale never wavered. Arms crossed, leaning against my door, he was a rock.
Eventually, it was Debbie who blinked first. With a huff, she left. We won. Dale won. He stood up for me. He refilled my heart and mind with the Christmas cheer I'd been hoping to share.
Dale then proceeded to tell me that I should never, ever, ever let some miserable sad-sack make me feel bad for doing what I thought was the right thing. That last day before Christmas break, when I'd had my sense of how I presented to the world challenged, he gave me a wonderful gift, a life lesson that has stuck with me ever since. Whereas before I felt apprehensive about following my whims, about just “doing me” when the urge hit me, Dale impressed on me that being anything other than authentic shortchanges a person, and puts them at a disadvantage.
Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true.” Lao Tzu advised, “Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner."
To those ancient words of wisdom, I add Dale’s lesson: “Fudge 'em”.
Dale and Joan. I mean, look at that smile. It’s Cheshire Cat-worthy.
A few years later, after I'd left that company and moved on to greener pastures, I got a call from Ken, my aforementioned accounting friend. He had heard from Joan that Dale was in the hospital. And it didn't look good.
When I called Joan to find out how Dale was doing, she happened to be at the hospital with him. She put him on the phone. Dale was incapable of talking, though. All he could do was moan and gurgle. When Joan returned to the phone, I asked her how he had gotten so bad. I had seen him just a few months earlier, and he seemed fine. Joan explained that his liver was failing, and it was only a matter of time before he passed. I had to stifle myself from bursting into tears when she suggested I come see him before it was too late.
I should have gotten in the car right then. But I didn't. The thought of seeing Dale hooked up to machines, with tubes running in and out him, was too much for me to bear. It was Suzie who told me that it's important to fight through the sadness and show up for a friend who's in distress. It doesn't matter whether they've got a flat tire, or need help moving, or they're seriously ill... showing up is the right thing to do. Even if Dale couldn't physically thank me for visiting, it was her belief that, on a spiritual level, he would appreciate me just sitting at his side and holding his hand.
Suzie's words convinced me I was... well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I was being a whiny little bitch. I had to show up for my friend. With a new resolve in my heart and mind, I planned to visit Dale the following day.
Unfortunately, Dale died that night.
He went peacefully, according to Joan. But he was gone. No more monkfish jokes. No more free birthday desserts. No more pirated software. No more Dale. Ever.
My dad's own sudden and unexpected death was still a good five years away, so it was left to Dale to teach me one last life lesson: to be aware of my own mortality. Dale had the dubious honor of being the first person I was close to that I lost. I'd been making my way through the world with this Wolverine-like sense of invulnerability, not entertaining a single thought or fear about how the randomness of life could, in no time at all, take my loved ones (or me, for that matter) away. Boy, did I wise up quick!
Dale in 1996. Rest in peace, my friend.
Several weeks later, Joan held a small celebration of Dale's life in the backyard of their house, the same backyard where I'd shared a beer with him not long before. After a small Buddhist-styled ceremony, everyone who attended was asked to speak about Dale, and how he had touched their life.
When my turn came, I was doing everything I could to contain my emotions. I hate crying. And I really hate crying in front of people, no matter how close I am to them. I concentrated every erg of willpower on keeping my tears at bay.
I stood up. I took a breath. Dammit, I was going to do this without falling apart. But as I started to speak, my eyes fell on the small altar Joan had created for the event. Front and center was a picture of Dale, beaming that patented smile of his.
And the tears just exploded out of me.
Damn that man, he made me be true in his presence one last time. I was sad. No, I was heartbroken. And I couldn't hold it back. He deserved to see my sorrow, to see how much his friendship had meant to me. Yet I couldn't help laughing inside, because somewhere deep in my head (or was it my soul?) I could hear his reaction to my emotions. “You're still alive? Yeah, well, my mom is dead.”
So when Christmas rolls around, and the first strains of “Joy To The World” fill the house, my brain instantly creates a chain of associations that lead straight to my late friend. “Rejoice!... Christmas... software... typing... carpal tunnel... wrist protectors... Debbie Downer... Fudge 'em.” Now that's a Christmas memory I hope I never forget.
God rest you, Dale. You merry, gentle scamp of a man.
Happy holidays, everyone! Stay safe and sane!
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning screenwriter and film editor. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his long-suffering wife. You can follow his ramblings on Twitter and Instagram.