I spent a long time trying to think what story I would tell to celebrate Gerry Winch. After spending half my time growing up at his house I’ve got a lot of stories. I thought about telling the story of the time Gerry taught me to always read the labels on my food, by offering me a “pickle” from a jar of hot peppers that was carefull arranged with the label hidden from me. I thought about talking about the time when Gerry was babysitting my brother and I, and I, at age eleven or so, forced him to play Dungeons and Dragons with me. I thought about talking about the day I spent at the woodlot with him and Derek, where I first saw a man and his son do a real day of work, and where I lasted about 20 minutes. I thought about talking about the time I tried to call Gerry “Mr. Winch” because I was learning about manners, and how he set me straight on that point pretty quickly. There’s hundreds of stories.
But there’s one that stands out in my mind. A time that Gerry taught me a number of things without even knowing he was doing it, just by being himself. Some of these things have taken me years to figure out.
I’m not sure how old I was at the time, but it was around the time that Derek was really into the Europe album, The Final Countdown, so it must have been 1986 or something. That would have made me 13.
My parents had been playing cards at the Winch’s place, along with two other couples–friends of Diane and Gerry’s that they didn’t really know. As was usual, I had been hanging out with Derek while this went on. At some point “the kids” had gone to bed, sleeping in Derek’s room, right beside the table where cards were going on. I couldn’t sleep, and was lying in the dark listening to the adults talking.
After my parents left, one of the other guys made some comment about how my Dad was pretty seriously full of the old BS. Thirteen years old, listening to this in the dark, I was pretty pissed off, but on reflection it was probably not an unfair thing to say–Dad could be kind of full of it sometimes, and Diane was often the first to call him on it.
Anyway, what I heard next was Gerry talking. I can’t get the exact words, it’s been 19 years or so, but it was something to the effect that Dave could be a bit of talker, but he was always there for his friends and “his heart was as big as he is”.
Well, I’ll tell you, hearing that made me insanely proud of my Dad.
Even at thirteen I got the obvious lesson out of that, about what it means to be a friend, and what the important parts of freindship really are . Lesson One that Gerry taught me by accident.
It was a while later before I realized that part of the reason that hearing that meant so much to me was because of who was saying it. I respected Gerry, and knew that he didn’t say that sort of thing unless he really meant it. Lesson number Two, about meaning what you say, and how your words have more value if you only use them when you mean them.
It was a long time after that before I realized the most important thing though–before I realized how easy it is to just let that sort of comment pass, to have a chuckle at the guy who’s not in the room because it doesn’t matter. Well, that’s the easy thing to do, but it’s not what Gerry did. It would have been trivially easy for him to just let the comment pass; it didn’t really matter, and no one would have been bothered (except maybe the thirteen year old he didn’t even know was listening)–but he didn’t. He stood up for his friend. Lesson number three, the trickiest one, about saying what you mean. About not letting these things pass, even if, or perhaps especially if, it would be so easy.
I can’t recall Gerry ever purposefully setting out to teach me something–except for how to use a wedge and sledge, and well, that wasn’t exactly a success–but he taught me a whole pile of things anyway. While I hope I’m turning out to be the kind of man that knows what friendship is, that means what he says, and that says what he means, I’m a little afraid that I’m rather more the kind of guy that, when he leaves a room, incites some comments on how he’s a bit full of it.
Well, if I can have one friend as good as Gerry Winch was to my father, I can live with that.
And I always check the label on the pickle jar, too.
