Returning currents in the sea of community

Last summer I had the summer intern experience from hell. It was one of those jobs where you spend half of your day dreaming up creative ways to insult all of your boss's sensibilities when you quit. By the end of the summer, my elaborate schemes of insulting were booby trapped conditions of his communication. "Boy, if he says this then I will explode into this tirade," I thought. Of course I never said anything. I casually accepted my station in life and complained constantly to Dorry.

Slowly as the fall semester drifted on, I casually disappeared from the day-to-day exercise in sadism. Finally, by the end of the semester, I no longer worked there. I had no harsh feelings--just an empty desk and an empty chair.

Everything was good. Several months passed, and then one Friday night HE CALLED. Out of the blue, I was out having some drinks, and my cell phone rang, I didn't recognize the number, and all of a sudden I was on the phone with him. I felt like a dog that was always beaten at the sound of a bell (or fed whatever pavlov did--beaten is better for my story). Shocked, I wondered what the hell he wanted. "Sure, tomorrow is good. One o'clock, no problem," I agreed to meet him at his house to work on his computer without a second thought. I just wanted to get off the phone. I would have promised him my first born son. This man had very strange effects on me.

I worked on his computer, and he arranged for me to start doing some work for him at consulting rates, which are 5 times what he paid me over the summer. Over the course of the next few months, I would work for him every few weeks, and he referred me to work for others. Most importantly in that period, I developed a friendship him that I never would have imagined possible.

As I looked for a summer internship this summer. I listed this boss as a reference. He told me later that he had given me one of the best references he had given anyone. Now, here is a guy that I envisioned breaking into little pieces and insulting his mother in four languages, but I waited. Somehow in the sea of relationships the currents took us out to sea and we were able to meet at a different place. Amazing.