A tribute to someone you don’t even know

I just wanted to blog a bit about a really lovely man I know and whom I’ve grown up knowing most of my life. Hardly anyone who reads this knows who he is, but I feel compelled to talk about him anyway.

That person is Don Osborne. A few of my friends might know him as Cassie Osborne’s dad. They’re probably rolling their eyes too because Don used to be kind of a pain in the ass sometimes. He’s a very outspoken person, just like his wife Dee and his daughter Cassie. Their whole family has no fear of putting themselves out there with the flick of the tongue. When you’re younger, this can seem really really stupid and annoying. But now at my wise old age, I see it as a rather admirable (if sometimes exhausting) trait.

I first met Don when I was a kid of about 10. Cassie was on my soccer team and Don volunteered to coach us that year. I couldn’t stand him to save my life. He was loud and obnoxious and constantly running us ragged. I’d been playing soccer for five years at that point, and I was pretty sure I knew what I was doing. So you can imagine how indignant I would get whenever he turned his verbal whiplashing on me. Oh, I may not have outwardly display my annoyance, but deep down inside you can bet I was just seething and bitchy!

Don coached us for a couple of years before passing us off to someone else. By the time I left the wide world of youth soccer, we’d already been through two or three other really nasty coaches. (sidebar: where the fuck do they get these people? I mean, seriously. I had one coach whom I wanted to put through a woodchipper, he was such a jerkoff. Jette may remember him, Jesse Marez. He was a COCK. Plain and simple. He’d played soccer all his life and thought he was THE SHIT. Yeah, he was hot. But it didn’t change the fact that he was a monstrous COCK. I wanted to quit every time we had a practice.)

I didn’t have to deal with Don again until high school, when Cassie and I were in band together. Don and Dee would volunteer often to chaperone various events, including the Infamous Disneyland Trip of ’89. Oh just you wait until I blog about that one! Even during high school, Don was a thorn. Cassie was kind of a whiner most of the time, and Don and Dee made sure that it was known that Cassie was displeased and therefore they were displeased. Made me want to chew my own face off.

After high school, I didn’t see them for a while. I think this is where time allowed me to chill out, mature, gain a little perspective. This is such a good thing for me. Believe it.

Several years after high school, I was at a wine tasting with my mom and we ran across Don and Dee. Don immediately came up to me and embraced me in a big warm bear hug. I was surprised to say the least, but hell, we were all sippin’ the vino that night. Nobody was in their right mind. Don ranted and raved for twenty minutes about how great it was to see me and how I was always one of his favorite kids during soccer (?!!!). I took it all with a grain of salt because I have also been known to make outrageous slightly false claims while inebriated.

A while later, mom and I ran across them at another function that did not involve wine. Don once again sang my virtues and just gave me a very wonderful, warm reception. It was then that I realized how much I really did like this guy, and how no matter how grumpy and pushy he was as my coach, he had thought a lot of me as a person. It touched me that someone could be that way about someone they only dealt with four months of the year. And it touched me that even at that late point in time, he was still carrying on about it and very very happy to see me every time we met up. It was like you see in those movies, where there’s this teacher or coach or some random adult who is just very angry and berating and forceful with some teenager, only to find out later at the climax of the plot that the teacher/coach/random adult did it because they cared and knew that the teenager had potential but needed the extra pushing to reach that full potential. Seriously, I actually had a life moment that actually validated all those sappy flicks.

So ever since that point in time, I’ve just been smitten with Don. Not in a pervy way, you freaks. In an “I can’t believe I’ve overlooked such a cool person all these years!” kind of way. He has this great sense of humor and he genuinely thinks well of me and is delighted to see me every single time we cross paths.

Two years ago Don was diagnosed with a debilitating degenerative disorder. I honestly don’t remember which one it is…that sounds bad, but I just have a poor memory for these kinds of things. It might be Lou Gehrig’s. That sounds about right. Anyway, it’s become clear that Don won’t be around in his present state for very much longer. His health is deteriorating already, even though he’s still spry and witty. He’s as much a spitfire as he ever was, but it’s obvious that his light is dimming a bit. And it’s going to dim a whole helluva lot more over the next few years. He’s not very old at all, maybe a few years over my dad, tops. And yet he’s going to slide slowly backwards into this horrible wall that he’ll be trapped behind until he finally succumbs at a ridiculously young age. This saddens me terribly. I’m not ready to let him go like that. I don’t even see him more than five times a year, but the idea of him not being around at all strikes me at the core of my heart.

And so I just wanted to tell you guys about Don and how I love him to pieces and I’m going to miss him like hell when he’s gone. It’s not often we meet such people in our lives that unexpectedly change us and affect us from the inside all the way outside in a good way. When you find those people, grab them and hold them to you and don’t let them go until you’ve damn near suffocated them. Make sure they know what a bright shiny spot they are in your life before they’re gone for good. Appreciate them as much as they appreciate you. You’ll regret it if you don’t.