When the thing you want least – is the thing you need most.

My first real business mentor was a guy I never wanted to be friends with again. 

I had known him from stand-up.

He was in our circle of local comics. 

We all ran pretty hard back then, but this dude (let’s call him “Charlie”) always took it too far. 

The one pushing coke… taking stupid risks at everyone’s expense. 

He was loud, crass, embarrassing to be out with. 

One time I was out on a road gig and he needed a bed. 

I let him stay at my place and he raided my coin jar for about 80 bucks. 

Around that same time he sold a framed music sheet of “Wild Horses,” signed by Keith Richards, that I was holding for a friend. 

Real addict shit. 

I was glad to cut him free from my life after that and felt, overall, I was getting off cheap. 

But, then Charlie got sober. 

Or, so I’d heard. 

A year or so later, after I’d moved to Chicago, I returned home to headline the club where I’d been the house emcee. 

It was a great victory lap for me at the time (and a reminder that sometimes you have to leave home to return triumphant).

So, Charlie shows up at the club holding a jar of random coins, filled to the exact amount he’d once stolen from me.

Amends, he called it. 

Then apologized. 

I was touched by the effort he’d made.

Filling a coin jar with $80 in coins takes time and a lot of good intent. 

I accepted his apology and told him to keep the money.

Token acknowledged. 

Just don’t make me carry a bucket of coins around to right your wronging of me. 

I know now that I should have accepted it and allowed him some closure. 

Dropped the coins off at a homeless shelter.

Thing was… 

Seeing him again just reminded me that…

I did not like the guy. 

He had changed his circumstances, which was admirable and courageous. 

Yet, he was still him.

And, I didn’t want him in my life. 

Fortunately, keeping him out was as easy as getting in my car and driving back to Chicago to continue writing my next chapter.

So I did. 

Life has a funny way of swinging you around, though. 

After I quit show business, following that fateful conversation with “Mrs. Kravitz” at a North Hollywood car wash. 

And flittering about for a spell.

I found myself back in Florida.

Humbled. 

Searching. 

Starting over. 

“Charlie really misses you, you know?” A mutual friend with a soft spot for Charlie was pushing me to pay him a visit. “He asks about you all the time.”

“He’s doing really good now,” my friend went on. “Stayed clean, got married, runs his own business. He’s killing it, dude.”

“I’m happy for him, man. I just don’t like the guy,” was my standard response. “I have no reason to see him.”

But, there was a reason to see him. 

Maybe I sensed it. 

Or, maybe Charlie’s relentlessness eventually won the battle. 

Whatever the reason, what happened next changed the direction of my life forever. 

I’ll share that next week.

P.S. The Mrs. Kravitz story, in case you’re new here 🙂