He's been my friend now for four years, but I learned his name only yesterday. Skip. His name is Skip. And he's back on my beat.

Skip and I first connected one autumn morning in 1992. I was on my way to work. It was before dawn, as usual. When I got to the intersection of East Medical Center and El Camino Real, I stopped for the traffic light. I noticed a man standing on the grassy median dividing El Camino. He waved at me. I waved back. As I made my right turn, heading for the Space Park office, I could see that he was selling papers. Hmmm, I thought. We'd never had a newspaper rep on the corner before.

The next morning he was there again. He recognized me and smiled broadly, waving and signaling thumbs up. "Nice ride!", he yelled. "Thanks!", I yelled back, hanging my wave out the window as I made the turn. Next day same-same. Pretty soon I knew I could count on him to be there.

I came to think of him simply as "the paper guy". He turned out to be as reliable as Big Ben, too. Regardless of the weather, he was always there, waving and shouting to folks, givin' 'em big smiles and howdies as he sent them on their way to work. It didn't matter if they bought a paper or not. He considered his job to be more that of Official Early Morning Wage Slave Greeter than newspaper salesman. I'm sure The Houston Post didn't look at it that way, but it was easy to see how he prioritized his workload.

He might be wearing a poncho, huddled over trying to protect himself in the winter wind and rain, but he was there. The temperature might be 15 degrees with a wind chill factor of -5, but he'd be there. He was there for the Post and he was there for us.

He built up quite a large waving clientele after a time. I watched his participative audience grow and grow over the months. People who ordinarily never speak to strangers would find themselves waving and smiling at the paper guy. His enthusiasm was so completely infectious, they couldn't help themselves.

February 1993 rolls around and my group moves from the Space Park office to a new facility at Ellington Air Field. Suddenly one morning I drive up to the traffic light and get in the left turn lane. The paper guy is looking at me with a quizzical expression on his face, holding his hands palm up, like hey, whatsadeal, man? I tried desperately to yell the words, making a bunch of wild hand signals in the process, but didn't communicate anything except a severe lack of communicative ability. So I drove around the block, where I could come up to him on my left side, and screamed, "Our office has moved!" as I hung a right at the speed of light. He gave me a thumbs up and a big smile. Mission accomplished.

He missed me when I was off work on vacation. "Where have you been, girl?" "Vacation again?!?" He'd alternately rib me about being a lazy bum and rejoice with me in the freedom of it. He agonized with me every time I had to put the Dream in the shop for some reason. He knew how much I hated driving those rental cars. Rental cars are comfortable and functional and reliable but they are *not* cool. The paper guy was hip to this.

Two years or more go by. One morning I drive to the corner and the paper guy is not there. I am a little concerned but I shrug it off. A few hours later the Tower is abuzz with the news that The Houston Post has been sold to The Houston Chronicle and all the people at the Post were told to go home. Boom, just like that. They show up for work one morning and before 0900 they're history.

My heart sinks. So *that's* why the paper guy wasn't on the corner this morning!

I didn't see him again for a long time. Then one day I am getting out of my car at the grocery store and somebody yells, "Hey, gal, where you goin'?" I look up in time to see the paper guy hanging off the back of a Chronicle truck pulling out into the street. He waves until they vanish from sight. He's working again! It made my week.

We have kept in touch through those occasional parking lot sightings. Yelling "How are you?" and "Is it groovy?" and stuff like that at one another. Then yesterday I go to the grocery store for the weekly provision purchase. The cat food, the dog food, the birdseed, the rocket scientist fuel.

As I'm walking in the door somebody says, "Hey, gal, whatcha doin'?"

I know that voice. It is the paper guy! He holds out his arms. I rush into his embrace. We give each other a big hug.

Then he says, "Damn it, I promised myself if I ever got to see you again I'd find out your name. I'm Skip ... who *are* you, anyway?"

"I'm Youngblood, Skip, and it's really nice to meet you."

We hug again.

I hang there talking to Skip for about half an hour. He tells me the painful story, in full detail, of how his job with The Post ended. The suddenness of it, the unbelievability. It was positively surreal. He says he would wake up at 0330 every morning and then realize he had nowhere to go. Nothing to do. So he made a phone call to a guy at the Chronicle. The Chronicle guy knew him because Skip had outsold him for six months running when they were working side by side at the Seabrook Kroger. The Chronicle picked him up immediately. I tell him how good it is to know, at long last, that he's been working all this time. That's when I learn that my grocery store is Skip's new sales location. So I'll be seeing him every week!

I buy my groceries, hug Skip goodbye as I exit the store, and return home to Rock & Roll Heaven where I learn that my own Muthah has just been assimilated by the Borg. It's a done deal, and it makes us the biggest, baddest Muthah on the block.

In case you were wondering ... resistance is futile.

er ... weren't Skip and I just talking about this kind of shit ... ?