We took a booth at the Philadelphia Home Show again this year and I was just sitting there on a slow Monday night when John Burke from our office looks over at a lady at the next booth over from us and says in a kind of  I can’t believe it sort of way “Is that Mrs *******” and stands up and begins to walk up to this lady that turns out to be a woman that is in fact, Mrs. *******, a close fiend of his mother and his entire family and they do the whole I can’t believe your here thing, blah blah blah, hah hah hah……whatever. I mean its Monday night at The Philadelphia Home Show, no one is walking around yet and I give a shit why? So he starts to walk over with her and I start thinking of ways that I can start running without it being noticeable because I know were now going to do the whole this is blah blah blah thing. So he walks up and introduces me to this nice woman  a few years older than me and we begin to talk about how she began working for this builder that was in the next booth over from ours just a few years back and all the other smalltalk that those type of situations are composed of when she breaks into a big smile and out of nowhere says “ You know, I know you from when you were like 6 years old”.  I look at her again and try to recognize something in her face and the curtain starts to part. She then goes on and says, I worked at your aunt’s  pizzeria in the shopping center on 63rd street. I tilt my head and keep looking at her face trying to see it as it looked 40 plus yrs. ago as she continues to talk about My Aunt Louise who was an absolute legend and on of the most infamous characters from the story that is still told by people who were a part of Sea Isle City back in the 1960’s. We had our own little subculture back then. We were shopping center people, our whole world centered on 63rd street. We had the pool and the arcade my aunts pizzeria and life was as good as it gets. People came down the shore back then for the “whole summer” and it was wonderful. So I ask her name and she says that back then her maiden name was Pat %%%%%% and BOOM there I was back in 1968 sitting at the counter eating a slice of my aunts pizza with the best friends a kid could ever have listening to my aunt scream “PAT” from her kitchen domain. I could literally hear her voice screaming “PAT” because that was what she did, when the food was ready she would screech the name of whatever young girl was responsible to come and get her food and bring it out to the counter. But “PAT was the one that had stayed for the whole time that era was composed of. She came back for seven consecutive summers and she always smiled this beautiful smile and she was never anything but this sweet person and in my families world back in the shopping center days sweet and selfless stuck out. I instinctively reached for my cell phone to call my best friend from back then whose name was Richard. I wanted to tell him I had run into “PAT”. I didn’t dial because he died a year ago but I still reach for the phone in moments like that. So anyway “PAT” and I  talked and talked and out of nowhere a nothing Monday night at the Philadelphia Home Show became special. As I sit here and write this I am still “feeling It”. A kind of buzz. The feeling that comes when I feel connected to what is going on around me, energized and hopeful. Turned from one side of the coin to the other by a moment as random as random gets.

There is no actual point to this entry so if your like my wife and always want to have the story wrap up in a neat ending then I apologize in advance. I just felt like sharing last nights experience with this blog. I still have no idea what I’m supposed to put in this thing. I don’t read blogs so I don’t know. But I know that I cant just write about real estate because that would be unsurvivable for both of us. So I shared this story with you because it made me think about how effected we are by each other. How inspiring and hopeful it is that people can help us by simply remembering and caring and sharing a memory. Before I met Pat the only thing on my mind was that there was no way I was renting a booth at The Philadelphia Home Show next year and this morning I’m thinking next year, maybe a bigger booth. Go figure.