Thom entered our lives completely unannounced one night soon after we had bought our houseboat.
Our lives have never been the same.
There was a knock at the door. Weird. It’s like 9 p.m. on a weeknight. Who does that.
We cracked the door to find a well-dressed couple on our porch.
He was fancy boy. Hat. Scarf. Snug slacks. Shoes. Confident. Dandy. Debonaire.
She was sassy, brassy, and blonde. Handbag. Shoes. Dress. She had style—and she knew it. And she knew that you knew she knew it, too.
Together, they were a dock power couple to be reckoned with, living a life of glamour and opulence beyond our wildest imaginations.
In time, we would learn that he was a dentist. Yanking molars for cash. She was a designer to the stars. Fancy cars. Fancy houses. Fancy wine. Crudités.
They were Utahns, we would learn in due time, from the land of tall mountains and jello salads. But they’d fallen in love and gotten out, escaped to the bright lights and soggy bottoms of Seattle. They were Utahns on the run, headed for bigger horizons, and there’s one thing that everyone knows about Utahns on the run: Nobody parties harder.
Tonight, standing on our porch, these two Utahns were toasted from a night on the town.
We welcomed them into our house, and after some pleasantries Thom broke the silence.
“We were wondering who was going to buy this house. We checked it out when it was listed but it’s so weird and small and all chopped up into little rooms like an old lady had lived here for 50 years.”
Katie and I took a moment to process the info dump.
Thom, whom we’d just met 30 seconds earlier, smiling before us, in our new home, had just told us our houseboat was a turd.
That, in a nutshell, is all you need to know about Thom. Fiercely honest and ferociously friendly at the same time. Generous. A lover of people and interaction. Friendly to all. A smiler. A laugher. A golfer and predictor of sports.
Thom speaks straight from his heart, unfiltered, the words spilling from his mouth without having first bypassed through his brain.
It’s a quality that we and, we would guess, all of Thom’s friends adore.
We became immediate friends. Wino Wednesdays. Meats. Meat sweats and hangovers. Dock Drama. The Rainbow Unicorn Incident.
We thought we were only buying a houseboat. Little did we know that we were getting something even more precious, even more priceless. A good friend. Two good friends, and in time three. And all of your friends’ friends, because you are a collector of people who like to have fun.
Happy birthday Thom. We love you. Your best days may be in the past, but you’ve done well.
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