It Is Also Written (Or, Texts Prove Exactly Squat)
I never expected to bump into Randy. It was the summer of 1984. I was scouring the Pacific Northwest for my first teaching job, driving for interviews on the coast, in the rain forest, the desert, the mountains, in both Oregon and Washington. In between these trips, I frequently stopped off in Salem to visit my friend Scott, occasionally sleeping on his couch. During one of these visits, Scott introduced me to a friend he'd made in law school, who, to Scott's surprise, I'd actually known for nine years. Randy was a fellow alumnus of Philomath High School, where he'd graduated the year before me. He'd gone to college somewhere in Portland, taken a year off or something, then come to Willamette. Randy had always been an irritating person to have a conversation with, stubbornly worrying at an argument until I felt like chewing off my oratorical leg, which made him a perfect candidate for the legal profession. In the years since I'd last seen Randy, he had ho...