The Owen Money 5

I went to lunch on Saturday with a couple of my high school friends. It proved that six years after high school life is pretty much the same.

*Owen*

I met Owen when I was a junior in high school. I was trying to scrounge up a quarter so I could get a drink out of the pop machine. He gave me the quarter and I found out that had just moved from Maryland. He told me the following really bad joke:

"There were two ducks in a shower and one said to the other, 'Hey, could you hand me the soap?' The other duck replied, 'What do you think I am--a radio?"

It was a brave move to introduce yourself with such a horrible, nonsensical joke. In my mind it was also the perfect move. I decided to take Owen under my wing and help him to get accustomed to the very unique quirks of going to high school in Utah.

On several occasions, my friend Ty and I were successful in getting Owen out of his hermit-like basement existence in order to have interesting misadventures including (but not limited to): losing him downtown on New Year's Eve, having him nearly kill us in his the Wagoneer, "The White Tiger," on our way to the Hogle Zoo and watching him timidly jump on a trampoline for the first time.

In the three years since I have been home from Holland I have seen Owen two times, both of which were as unusual as I had expected. The first was a few years ago when Ty and I went over to his house. Despite not having seen either of us for two years, Owen couldn't talk long because he wanted to make sure he could make it to Cafe Rio before they closed at 9 p.m.

*Jamo*

Jamo (Jay-mo) is a computer nerd, but not in the same way I am. He actually knows how to fix computers and make them do cool stuff. I only know how to play on them. He is very intelligent, recently learned to play guitar, and loves the Simpsons. He earned my respect in high school when he volunteered his father's 6-foot-long mounted fish as a prop for us to use for the Christmas dance. We all dressed up in Hawaiian clothes and ran around downtown in the freezing cold carrying this giant fish everywhere we went.

***
Here's the highlights from the lunch:

OWEN (who is as skinny as a stick) to the WAITRESS: Is there anything healthy on this menu? I'm on a diet.

JAMO on dating: I think I have "G.A.D.D."--girl attention deficit disorder. I just get bored so easily with girls.

OWEN: I haven't been on a date in seven months.

OWEN: I had a girlfriend and we were probably going to get married, but then we broke up.

SPENCER: Was she a lesbian?

OWEN: [laughs, but no answer]

OWEN (after eating about 10 percent of his healthy meal) to the WAITRESS: Can I get a salad?

JAMO: I'm going rock climbing on a date tonight.

SPENCER: Do you know how to rock climb? It's really hard.

JAMO: I'll be fine. I've got really strong arms.

SPENCER: I still work at the same job I had in high school.

JAMO: Me, too.

OWEN: I'm single, unemployed and I live at my parents house. My hair was long for a while,
but I cut it a few months back for a job interview. Now I have short hair again so basically nothing is different than when I was in high school.

SPENCER: Well guys, this was fun. We'll do it again in six months. Maybe in three months if anything interesting happens in your lives.

OWEN: [silence]

JAMO: [silence]

It was a good time.