11/11/2007 - Miguel

When I was in Junior High and High School I had a friend named Miguel. He transferred to our school in seventh grade and we met during football. He likes to tell people that I was the first person he met at Gesu during our football training camp. He said that my warnings about how tough camp was going to be scared him. Of course the first day of camp I got hurt and had to sit out the whole week so he went through it alone. That sounds like something that would happen to me, or that I would do.

We became good friends and I would go to his house to hang out pretty frequently as I remember. His family were great people and always very happy to have me over, even though I was a pretty obnoxious kid.

His folks were good church folk and I remember one time I showed up at his house during my ugly shirt phase. I would try to find the most ridiculous clothes to wear in a vain effort to draw attention to myself. I walked in wearing a red, white and blue USA type shirt with a buxom lady on the back wrapped in the American flag. He made sure I changed out of that before his parents saw me. I guess my point is that anyone who could put up with me as a friend when I was that age had to be a heck of a person.

Here is a picture of us at my thirteenth birthday party. He is second from the left. I am the lady machine on the far right with the yellow socks and Cincinnati Bengals sweatpants reading the graphic novelization of the movie “2010.”



Miguel grew up, went to college, worked for the World Bank for a while. Later he became a graphic designer for the largest newspaper in Spain and now he lives in Madrid with his wife Lidia and son Maximo. I hadn’t talked to him in about five years but I dropped him an email about a week ago and asked him if he would be interested in getting together while I was in town. He responded right back and we were all set.

I called him after we got into our hotel room on Sunday and they came to the hotel about a half hour later. We walked to a Brazilian restaurant and had our dinner there. It was an excellent meal that we ate over the course of three hours. We had a great conversation. We spent the time catching up and reminiscing. I had never met his wife so I was happy to get to know her a little. His son is three months old so he didn’t have much to say but he is a well-behaved young man and Miguel is a very proud father. The surprise for me was that his mother came along. I hadn’t seen her since the 80s and we had a very nice visit.

As for the dinner, we started out with a salad bar but the main course was brought to the table by servers. It was a Brazilian meat feast and they kept bringing different kinds of meat to the table for us to have. I ate Spanish blood sausage, a type of Brazilian sausage, a slice of rib eye, a slice of roast beef, a piece of New York strip, a chicken wing and thigh, and a pork rib. I had to stop them because they kept bringing out different things to try and I just couldn’t do it anymore. They never brought the same meat twice and they must have brought ten to twelve things for us to try. In addition to the meat we had french fries and dinner rolls and I had a Brazilian beer to drink. After dinner there was tea, dessert and a shot of Spanish brandy to settle the stomach. It was an excellent Sunday meal with good friends and I’m sure it will be one of the highlights of the trip.

Tom, Miguel, Lidia and Maximo