Six Degrees from …

            A true story: Summer, 1998. We are at Myrtle Beach and our younger son is eleven months old. We’re on the beach and realize we need a change of “floaties” and juice. I leave the beach and head through the hotel lobby and into the elevator to go to our room. As the door begins to close an arm comes in.  The door opens and in walks … Kevin Bacon. That’s right, the actor Kevin Bacon. Being who I am, I look at him and go, “Hey, how’re you doing?” I get a tepid “fine” and then Mr. Bacon puts his head down and has no further conversation with me.

            A second true story: we have a wonderful biology teacher this fall. She’s energetic, enthusiastic and brilliant. She’s also a “local,” raised in Charlotte County before moving away to become an infectious disease researcher. We were talking the other day and the subject of the movie, “Sommersby” came up. That movie – starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster – was filmed in the town I was living in with my wife and then only child.

            “My brother rented his house to Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford,” she told me. I knew the house. And, I remember Cindy Crawford. See, while Richard was “filming,” his significant other was exploring our little town (made famous after Brown vs. Board of Ed, when the white country school board voted to close the public schools rather than integrate). And that led Cindy, in a spandex sports bra and tights, to end up at the gym I worked out at. Cindy (I still feel like I’m on a first name basis!) came over to me and, in a sweet voice, said, “Can you please spot me?” How could I say no? So there I was standing over the lovely super-model as she bench-pressed.

            That evening, I regaled my friends with my “Cindy” story paying particular attention, and providing minute detail, to one part of her anatomy. It eventually led my wife to comment, “You’d think he never saw nipples before.” Which – in turn – led to my retort, “not like those!”

            “Famous people” stories. I have dozens of them from my travels and I use them with the guys in here who are enamored with fame. I tell them their lives matter as much as Jay Z or Snoop Dogg or the dozens of other celebrities they wish they were like. I tell them the same thing I told my older son after I’d spent a night at a high dollar craps table with the producers for the band Coldplay. My son asked me “Did you get your picture with them?” I responded, “They should have asked to get a picture with me!”

            We live in a world that is obsessed with fame and celebrity. But, the truth is, people are people and the real work, the real decency, isn’t in your fame, it’s how you treat each other. I understand why these guys “want” the lives they see these other folks living. But for me, as great looking as Ms. Crawford was, I value the moments I have with these young guys a whole lot more.

            Six degrees from “name the celebrity.” That isn’t what’s important. Heart, courage, mercy, those matter … and never more so than for guys putting their lives back together in here.