I was talking to my cousin in New York and I told him I know how Sam (not real name) feels now. Sam is a guy who has been under house arrest for many years.

“Oh, that’s the funny part,” my cousin tells me. After all these years, his time is up, he is not under house arrest anymore!” But he is! Where can he go now?

Sort of reminds me of an Alanis Morissette song.

I met Sam a couple of times – at a bar, at happy hour, where there were many of us. My cousin would tell me, “Don’t look him in the eye, don’t joke with him, he is very volatile and could explode at any second!”

One time my cousin showed me an article in The NY Post where there was a picture of Sam being taken from his house by the feds in the middle in the night. It explained why Sam was under arrest – he beat up this guy, he gambled, he sold booze, he robbed a bank, he stole a car, he sold things that had “fallen off a truck,” he sold drugs and prostitutes, he hung with a shady crowd, etc, etc. he did everything except murder. You get it, he was a step down from Tony Soprano.

Anyway, my cousin would visit Sam at his NYC apartment once in awhile over the years, dreading each time he was “summoned,” but he would go with another friend of Sams. Now I guess they are all free and when the bars and restaurants are open again, they can hang out like they always did.

By the way, my cousin is an honest person who does an honest day’s work. In New York you are sort of thrown in with people by circumstances – you hang out with a buddy at  bar, he invited a buddy who invites someone and a guy comes over from a nearby table and becomes part of the group and so on. I was part of that mix for many years, but I got tired of it and got out. But these are all great people with one virus in the crowd. See how I did that?

Subscribe to this blog now. Receive Tomversation via email
each time I publish Click here.