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"The warden threw a party in the county jail
The prison band was there and they began to wail
The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing
You should've heard them knocked out jailbirds sing ..."
Elvis Presley - Jailhouse Rock, 1957. What a song. I am sure it is not quite half as jolly being a jailbird as this ditty implies. John37 knows that.
John37 and I started chatting. A lot. And often. And soon arranged a meeting. Lunchtime coffee was a date. In anticipation of the said date, John37 asked me to be his Facebook friend. I suppose he wanted to get a better feel for me prior to our meeting. See what I get up to, have a sneak preview of my lifestyle, what I think, what interests me, et cetera. I also did some due diligence on him, as one does. I took a peek at his Facebook page, too. Obviously. "A picture paints a thousand words" comes to mind. Ah, Bread sang that in 1971. Pop played that song ("If") on his turntable when I was all of four years old. Gosh, I have a good memory.
I noticed some familiar photographs when I was paging through John37's Facebook page. These photographs were of John37 and his children hugging in an airport. This rang a bell. A loud church bell kind of bell. One of those clangers. Quasimodo comes to mind. Poor chap. Eureka! My eldest had shown these very pictures to me a little while back. I wracked my brain. I called the said child. John37 had said that he had two children who turned out to be of the same age as my two eldest children. They also turned out to know my two eldest, well. "Yes, that's him" she replied upon my enquiry. You see, John37 was hugging his children in the airport upon his return from a spell in prison abroad.
"You cannot have coffee with him!" cried the son and heir, "imagine if you fell in love and married him and then you couldn't escape the country!" We are particularly sensitive to a lack of ability to flee a country in our hour of need. It's a past life issue. We have had to flee previously. In a past life. And we need to feel free to do so again. If we should need to.
John37 called me the evening before the first date. He was driving. We chatted. As one does. I was my usual charming self. I made no mention at the outset of the chat of the outcome of my sleuth work. What did it matter anyway? However, once John37 made mention of my Facebook posts I mentioned that I had looked at his Facebook page, too and had noticed that he had indeed just split up from his now ex-girlfriend. John37 was fairly recently single having broken up with his girlfriend, he had mentioned previously. He added during this particular call that he had dated her for many years. I then dropped the bomb, as I am known to do, a Hiroshima-style bomb in this case: "If you dated her for many years then she must have been very loving and understanding during your three-year period of incarceration" I said lacking emotion.
There was silence. John37 disappeared. He didn't actually disappear as I could hear the car purring in the background. But he was speechless. For a long minute at least. "How do you know?" he asked quietly. "How do you know I was jailed?" he mumbled. "John37, our kids are friends, all four of them! Of course I know!"
"Do you still want to meet tomorrow?" he asked a little later as the dust settled.
Of course we met. Why would I not wish to meet such an exciting man. What a story he would have to relate. And did he have a story to relate. I was so taken aback at John37's story. It was indeed a jaw-dropping listen. It is book-worthy. But more importantly, what had dropped my jaw was his courage, his introspection, the personal journey he had been on, his consciousness as a result of his "adventure". I was literally gobsmacked. Which does not happen often. I was riveted. What a coffee date. Probably the best coffee date I have ever had.
Sadly John37 didn't like me. In that sort of way, you know. Well, I supposed as much as we never did fall in love nor did we get married. But, I can flee the country anytime I need to do so. Which is a bonus I guess.