Now that’s good people

I’m not really sure why it is that Bill and I hit it off so well. On the surface of things we’re worlds apart. He’s 51, got a grown daughter and semi-retired with what I gather is a fairly lucrative nest-egg after selling his business. I’m confused and 28.

I keep joking with him that when I grow up I want to be Bill Murphy and that never fails to get a chuckle out of him. I suppose it´s because of the stories he´s told me about his own confusion. The ex-wife, the ex-girlfriend, the ex-Colombian girlfriend and the current Cuban one. I guess he doesn´t really feel like a role-model.

But Bill and I do have this weird Father / Son vs. Old Buddies aspect to our relationship. Sometimes I find myself just listening to him as if he were the fountain of wisdom, and when he asks my advice on something I´m almost a little flattered. But other times its just two buddies smoking cigars and shooting the ####.

He´s given me lots of advice on learning spanish (which is great because no native spanish speaker can tell you the difference between the Preterite tense and the Imperfect), on women (some of which has been spot on, and some of which I realized I needed to take at my own risk) and business matters. We´ve talked politics and I´ve been able to teach him a thing or two about computers and India´s emergence as a world power.

No Bill doesn´t have it all figured out, but what I dig about him is he doesn´t have to pretend he does. Sure he´s got an opinion on everything under the sun, but he´ll check yours out too and give it thought.

Sometimes you meet people and just get a feeling that they´re worth keeping around. That you know they´d have your back if you needed and would stay true to their word. That´s what Bill is like. Bill is heading back to the US for a bit (I´m guessing not a very long bit) and I´m off to Panama. I invited Bill out to visit me in Buenos Aires in March, Bill invited me up to Charleston for marlin season. I´m sure our paths will cross again, it´ll be interesting to see where.