Not the "open the pod bay doors, HAL" a different kind of Hal. This one's married to my mom. Married her the same year I married Lu, on New Year's Eve. At the Wayside Wedding Chapel in Rough and Ready. I played the organ.
I don't usually play the organ, but I could plunk out your basic two-finger "here comes the bride" full stops, worked great. Big enough sound to fill the wayside chapel, at less than 300 sq. ft of pews and podium. Just enough to get the job done. I always got along pretty good with Hal. He lived with my mom for a few years before he married her, but it was always her that was holding out, looking for a better deal, younger, handsomer, more money. She'd been with my dad for 25 years of fighting and drama and she was gonna be careful this time. But Hal wanted her and stuck with her through it all, and they had a good way of getting along, both divorced, but only the once, and an easy sense of humor they both had that could laugh at yourself and your situation most of the time. I liked Hal. Sure, he was the one that she left my dad for, but he married her in the end and they had a good life together. I'm glad she found him. I just watched the Super Bowl with him. Not much of a party, just us. He's not as much fun and popular as he used to be and I can see why. He always had a funny, gloomy. Eyeore aspect which is less funny these days that's he's coughing away his life while his lung cancer grows and grows and his skin sallows, hollows deepen under his eyes. But on the other hand, you can say pretty much that he hasn't changed at all. He's gloomy about dying, but he's always been and so this is just a continuation of Hal. No big deal. Right? I know I still like hanging around him, and truthfully, so does everybody. Imposing a big whoop-to-do party on him wouldn't be doing him any favors. We probably had the best time just the way it was. My wife fixed a nice salmon and we had salad and fresh veggies. Hal was pretty much a lifetime smoker, and drinker and appreciator of fine women. Not too fine, mind, but you know, just right. Women he worked with, secretaries at bars. He's tall, and has a wry sense of humor and an ease with women and confidence that attracts them. He was a title officer for an escrow company in LA during the 70's and according to him, those were just about the best damn days the universe has ever come up with. One big extended, happy party. There was so much of that experimental ferment in the air, and society was like a kid getting let out on summer break, the long hard lessoning of values from the 40's and 50's AND 60's was OVER. School's out for summer.... School's out for - ever? Hal was one of the few people who I really liked talking to. I could converse pleasantly with most people, but Hal was actually interesting. Part of it was he was accepting, didn't get uptight with me the way most people do when my lifestyle choices contradict theirs. Hal and I were so fundamentally apart the idea of converting the other was ridiculous. We both didn't mind discussing ourselves or anything that came to mind. He called himself "the perimeter man". He'd go stand on the perimeter, usually so he could smoke, but it was more than his smoking that kept him apart. He liked being a man apart and his smoking was the tool that gave him his solitude. I was sort of a perimeter man myself so we had that in common. I bonded most with him when we were in the Darts League together. He and my brother had been in B league the year before I joined, and that year they'd won B league which meant they got to join A league. I think the team that finishes last in A league has to go down into B league, I'm not sure, it never happened to Hal Darts - which became the name of our team. Hal Darts was a term for a slop shot playing cricket - you're aiming for the triple 20 and you miss so bad you hit the trip 18. Most of the guys in A league didn't miss that bad. Most of the guys in the Gold Country Darts Association in A league were very fine dart players. A couple even nationally rated. So Hal missing this bad (but good) and doing it often earned a lot of remark and a disgusted respect. Disgust because "luck" shots are bad enough, but Hal seemed to pull 'em out of his hat at the most opportune times. I actually think there's a mechanism for this. Important shots at crucial times cause you to overthink and choke, and Hal had a tendency to do that all the time, but even more so when the chips were on the line, so to speak. There wasn't any real heavy stakes, drinks and dollars was pretty much the extent for the afterwards games, but getting league points was a big deal by definition of the people playing the game. And Hal took it all seriously. He knew the rules. He played by the rules. He broke the rules so much and had so much fun doing it during his earlier marriage, I think he might have felt strongly that he needed to keep all the rules ever since, just to make sure the balance was kept. Probably what made him a good title officer A lot of times, Hal was the worst shooter on the team, losing his games, spasing on important shots, but often coming up with weird and unlikely wins. Beating the league champ with three black bulls in one turn. And jeeze, the guy had books, I mean more than one, on the proper form and technique of the professional dart shooter. And he was almost like that nerdy kid with glasses who loves baseball and has all the players memorized but strikes out every time he goes to the plate and gets stuck in left field constantly. I drove him crazy. I didn't practice, I didn't read books and I never thought about it. I tried to keep my foundation stable and I'd fire three shots off before my muscle-memory got forgetful, was my technique and I usually beat Hal. Did pretty good on the team too, even won high out for 301 one year, still have the now-dusty plaque to prove it. I told him and my brother that the game of darts was a luck game. All we can hope for is a tight group and narrowing of the probabilities. In B league, they don't allow luck. You have to call your shots and slop isn't allowed. I think that sucks. It's not professional. Football takes some funny bounces sometimes, do you call off the lucky results? Of course not. Luck and randomness are an important part of any game. Those guys looked at randomness as the enemy - the proof of their lack of control. I viewed randomness as my friend - the race goes not always to the swift - us slow guys got a chance. So I'm proud to say randomness is an important component of being. I'm just not satisfied with the MoRonist position that it's being's fundament. I've gotten too many timely nudges in my own life to think that, and even trying to run a sort of reductio ad absurdem of avatarian beingness doesn't really fly when you just can't buy the premise. It's so ridiculous to me to think that the needle of the compass just happens to point in one consistent direction all the time. I mean, sure, I know, it definitely could be accounted for in the laws of probability, but when you're relying on odds of a googlplex to one against, aren't we really talking about the laws of IMprobability? Hal ended up religious. He actually got it before he knew he had cancer, so it's been kind of a real comfort to him. Which is what religion is good for and oughtn't to be so mocked by the young and seemingly immortal me's-me's of the world. And I gotta respect a guy who lives his own metaphor so creatively. Long after he's gone, there's a lot of guys around this county, shooting darts in bars, who will mutter in aggravation or contrition, "Hal dart" when they get something good, even though it wasn't quite what they were aiming for. 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