A real blast from the past, I talked to Terry for hours today. Pretty typical if we are both free to talk. If we talk at all, we talk a lot. Might be six months and we will do it again.
Those that have been around long enough will remember Terry as one of the really good people that made AZB special. He is doing great now but has found a more important calling than pool, he is preaching and spending his time serving God. Can't argue with that no matter how much I wish he was here.
This story is only marginally about Terry though. Terry was having a major surgery, about a week in the hospital and then a long time in bed. I wanted to brighten his stay in the hospital a bit but you can't send a big burly guy like Terry flowers, just ain't right. Aha, my first brainstorm, balloon bouquet. A fairly nice one might run seventy-five dollars or so back then, a small price to pay.
My next brainstorm is where I got in trouble. It struck me that he would like a bouquet and card from me but one from many of his friends on AZB would be nicer. I made the suggestion one evening that everybody donate a little with the idea of raising seventy-five dollars or so. As soon as I posted it was like a switchboard lighting up when the tenth caller gets a nice prize! Five or ten minutes and I was saying "Whoa, whoa, enough already!" Or something similar. My post was totally ignored and money kept pouring in. By the next day it was about a thousand dollars. WOW! It would be silly to spend that much on balloons, a plan "B" was needed.
I found out that Terry wouldn't be able to reach his desktop while in bed, it was in the basement and it would be a month or more before he could do stairs. We were in laptop range so I suggested getting him a laptop for his bedroom and running the cable or whatever to get internet access there. That opened the taps again when all I wanted was permission to repurpose the money we had already.
Before it was over with we bought Terry a nice laptop, had it hooked to the net, and bought a dozen or so pool dvd's to burn the rest of the money. I don't remember if I arranged the balloons or not!
Our better off members had contributed generously, people at all levels dug deep for Terry. Maybe the biggest gift was five dollars along with an apology. That was the last five dollars that member had! Needless to say, I told them no apology needed and that the donations weren't ranked by size.
I don't think about that little deal anymore but you can bet your bottom dollar Terry has never forgotten! Nobody has done something like that for him before or since. He still gives me far more credit than I deserve. I didn't plan to spearhead this huge outpouring of love and a little cash, I just thought it would be nice to buy him a balloon. Fortunately I made no mention in my first post of my plan to match whatever was raised to be sure he had a nice balloon bouquet.
I thought six or eight would be cool, a dozen very nice, eighteen or twenty enough to embarrass him and give me a good chuckle. Burying the room in balloons or what we eventually did wasn't the plan! I do have to admit that I still think delivering several truckloads of balloons to his hospital room would have been funny!
That was a half-dozen computers ago and I don't remember who all was involved. Some are dead, many are gone from AZB. I do wish we could get that old AZB feeling back though. It isn't bad now but it was once a really special community.
Hu
Those that have been around long enough will remember Terry as one of the really good people that made AZB special. He is doing great now but has found a more important calling than pool, he is preaching and spending his time serving God. Can't argue with that no matter how much I wish he was here.
This story is only marginally about Terry though. Terry was having a major surgery, about a week in the hospital and then a long time in bed. I wanted to brighten his stay in the hospital a bit but you can't send a big burly guy like Terry flowers, just ain't right. Aha, my first brainstorm, balloon bouquet. A fairly nice one might run seventy-five dollars or so back then, a small price to pay.
My next brainstorm is where I got in trouble. It struck me that he would like a bouquet and card from me but one from many of his friends on AZB would be nicer. I made the suggestion one evening that everybody donate a little with the idea of raising seventy-five dollars or so. As soon as I posted it was like a switchboard lighting up when the tenth caller gets a nice prize! Five or ten minutes and I was saying "Whoa, whoa, enough already!" Or something similar. My post was totally ignored and money kept pouring in. By the next day it was about a thousand dollars. WOW! It would be silly to spend that much on balloons, a plan "B" was needed.
I found out that Terry wouldn't be able to reach his desktop while in bed, it was in the basement and it would be a month or more before he could do stairs. We were in laptop range so I suggested getting him a laptop for his bedroom and running the cable or whatever to get internet access there. That opened the taps again when all I wanted was permission to repurpose the money we had already.
Before it was over with we bought Terry a nice laptop, had it hooked to the net, and bought a dozen or so pool dvd's to burn the rest of the money. I don't remember if I arranged the balloons or not!
Our better off members had contributed generously, people at all levels dug deep for Terry. Maybe the biggest gift was five dollars along with an apology. That was the last five dollars that member had! Needless to say, I told them no apology needed and that the donations weren't ranked by size.
I don't think about that little deal anymore but you can bet your bottom dollar Terry has never forgotten! Nobody has done something like that for him before or since. He still gives me far more credit than I deserve. I didn't plan to spearhead this huge outpouring of love and a little cash, I just thought it would be nice to buy him a balloon. Fortunately I made no mention in my first post of my plan to match whatever was raised to be sure he had a nice balloon bouquet.
I thought six or eight would be cool, a dozen very nice, eighteen or twenty enough to embarrass him and give me a good chuckle. Burying the room in balloons or what we eventually did wasn't the plan! I do have to admit that I still think delivering several truckloads of balloons to his hospital room would have been funny!
That was a half-dozen computers ago and I don't remember who all was involved. Some are dead, many are gone from AZB. I do wish we could get that old AZB feeling back though. It isn't bad now but it was once a really special community.
Hu
