Young Mr. Jason Ashcraft, the oldest son of two of my oldest friends, Phil and Denise Ashcraft, today turns an age many people pretend to be years later; 29, or twelve days older than our daughter. The plans Jason announced when they were about five years old, in the backseat of our car, driving through the Smokey Mountains - for he and our daughter to marry and live in the woods; never materialized, so to be perfectly candid, I don’t trust the guy. He wound up marrying someone far superior to himself in intellect, physical attractiveness and personality, but gees, a promise is a promise, right?
A couple of months before his wedding on December 3, 2005, I was at a shopping mall in Tampa, Florida killing time after attending sessions at a conference when my cell phone rang and it was Jason asking me whether I would be willing to sing Elton John’s “Your Song” at the ceremony. I said yes, even though as I have gotten older my singing is pretty much limited to the shower or while driving. If I did a less than satisfactory job, which could be the case, since it was after all a song by one of Jason’s favorite artists and I was not sure of my pitch on all the notes for whatever reasons, then let me just say right here, that is my revenge for him breaking his promise to my daughter. His dad noticed that Denise, Jason’s mom, was crying while I was singing and told her he didn’t think my singing was THAT bad.
In case you could not tell, I have tried to be funny up until now, but I do have a few serious things to say. Somehow Jason has been able to land jobs that me and a lot of the boys I hung around with as a kid would have killed for, jobs having to do with college sports. Right now he has a job where he has to follow the Xavier men’s basketball team all over the place writing up reports on what happens. Once we saw him on TV sitting at a press table in Gainesville, Florida, at the Florida-Xavier game and I texted to see if that was him in the blue shirt down in the corner behind one of the goals and he texted back and said, yes, that’s me. How cool is that? This coming week he flies to Spokane for a game and it is always something neat and interesting with his job.
I have trouble keeping up with Jason when it comes to talking about movies, TV or really esoteric stuff on practically any subject. With his dad as a social studies teacher and his mother so fully aware of everything going on in the world, he could not have turned out any differently. I still enjoy trying to talk to him though, given that I am in the field of education and I am supposed to know a lot of the stuff he really does know.
Jason is a pilot, a motorcycle rider, and the husband of an equestrian. They also have cars, so if it has to do with transportation, he and his wife pretty much have it covered, from horses to planes. Jason, here’s the link to Amazon’s array of Segways:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=segway&x=0&y=0
In closing, let me say, I am thrilled that Jessica, Jason’s wife is such an understanding person, given my joking above and also, that my daughter does not do the whole Facebook thing.
Happy Birthday Mr. Jason, age gracefully the way your wonderful parents and I are.
No comments:
Post a Comment