On a dark blue background centered on a view of the Winspear Opera House’s chandelier from Deb and G’s seats at the Keb’ Mo’ concert, there’s a photo of Keb’ Mo’ and part of his band at upper left. Both musicians are Black men dressed in shades of brown. The band member plays an electric bass and it’s not clear what stringed instrument Keb’ Mo’ is playing. Behind the two men are amplifying equipment, lights, and a deep blue background. At lower right, Deb grins at the camera and model’s G.S. Norwood’s new hat.
Good Friend/Bad Influence

Good Friend/Bad Influence

By G. S. Norwood

I’m convinced that everyone needs a good friend who is a bad influence. You might want to wait to get such a friend until after you’ve logged enough years as an adult to genuinely understand the basics of right and wrong:

  • Support yourself.
  • Be a reliable partner.
  • Take care of the kids, dogs, and kitties.
  • Don’t spread diseases to your friends and co-workers through any of the usual vectors (coughing, sneezing, unprotected sex).

But once you get those habits ingrained in your soul, you need to find a good friend who can be a bad influence on you every once in a while.

Top row, L-R: Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens (Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley) and Holmes and Watson (Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson from The Hound of the Baskervilles 1939). Lower row, L-R: Rebecca and Keeley from Ted Lasso (Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton and Juno Temple as Keeley Jones) and Lucy and Ethel from I Love Lucy (Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo and Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy, “Desert Island”).
Famous friend-pairs in media (See Credits below.)

A Good Friend

A good friend is someone who knows you well and loves you anyway. They might be a sibling, a co-worker, or someone you share a hobby or interest with. Someone you care about, who cares about you. Think Holmes and Watson, Crowley and Aziraphale, or Lucy and Ethel. If you’re a fan of Ted Lasso, think Ted and Beard, or Rebecca and Keeley. Even Roy and Jamie.

I was seriously ill through most of 2022, losing weight, muscle mass, hope, and most of my sense of humor. My very good friend—let’s call her Deb—checked in on me every day, brought me food she thought I could stomach, and even drove me to a few doctor’s appointments when I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to drive myself. She didn’t judge. She didn’t pity. But she did make me laugh, and that was possibly more important than all the rest.

Left side: G. S. Norwood has parked her hip on the front fender of the Black 2009 45th Anniversary Edition Mustang GT Deb talked her into buying. She has an enormous smile on her face, so of course Deb took the photo. Above right: G. S. Norwood’s Ruby Red 2014 Mustang GT stands in the driveway behind her home. Yes, it’s the one that replaced the black one. Lower right: the “GT” Logo.
G. with Mustangs. (See Credits below.)

A Bad Influence

But Deb is also a bad influence on me. The good kind of bad influence, I mean. A good friend who is a bad influence is the one who kicks you out of your rut, makes you pull your nose away from the grindstone, and who says, with a twinkle in their eye, “Why don’t you try it?” Or, even better, “I dare you!”

The classic example of Deb being a good friend/bad influence happened in 2009, when I was looking for a new car. I had driven a Ford Mustang while on vacation and, although I liked the idea of a Mustang, I wasn’t happy with the performance of the 6-cylinder engine in the cars I test drove.

So one afternoon, when Deb went car shopping with me, she asked the perfect good friend/bad influence question: “Why don’t you try the GT?”

For those of you who are not car geeks, the Mustang GT has a V-8 engine with a ridiculous amount of horsepower for a small coupe. You can literally feel the strength of that engine even when you’re crawling the car slowly through the dealer’s parking lot, trying not to hit anything. When I started chortling with glee over the throbbing rumble from under the hood, she asked another perfect good friend/bad influence question: “Are you having a car-gasm?”

Yes. Hell yes. I absolutely was.

In the upper left photo and in the background, three of Deb’s Benu pens lie on top of the handcrafted “ink journal” where she keeps all of the notes on ink colors. The left pen is fuschia on each end and glittery green and black in the middle where the cap and body join. The middle pen is dark pink with swirls of black and silver glitter. The one on the right is turquoise on the ends and darker royal and navy blue in the middle with subtle sparkles. Next to the journal stand two oval-profile glass bottles of ink. One contains dark red ink, the other dark blue. At lower right one, of G. S. Norwood’s fountain pens and two bottles of ink sit on top of a leatherbound journal. The pen is marbled sea-green with pale gold metal. One beaker-shaped dark blue glass ink bottle says “Levenger Blue Bahama” on the label. The label on the other is a rounded cube-shaped glass bottle, possibly with dark green ink. Its orange and black label says “Fountain Pen Inks.” Behind them, more pens fill a ceramic pen holder by Janet Rodriguez of Hart Street Pottery.
Pen, ink, and journal madness. (See Credits below.)

Good Friend/Bad Influence

The upshot of that test drive was that I spent about $5,000 more than I’d planned to spend, but I got years of driving delight from that black beauty, and the red one that came after. I promptly returned the good friend/bad influence favor by reminding Deb how much we both enjoyed writing with fountain pens, back when we were kids. She now has a sweet collection of sparkly Benus, along with a fun variety of other pens and enough bottles of ink to require a journal to keep them all straight.

As a good friend/bad influence I’m not only there to enable her shopping impulses. (Although, really, who doesn’t need just one more cool pen?) I’m also there to help her with her work. She writes mystery novels, but sometimes, like all of us, she gets stuck on a plot point and can’t quite decide what to do next. My go-to good friend/bad influence response is usually, “Is there somebody else you could kill? What about that guy at the bar?”

She might not actually kill the guy at the bar, but questions like that can jump-start her thinking, and lead her to explore interesting new directions her plot might take.

On a dark blue background centered on a view of the Winspear Opera House’s chandelier from Deb and G’s seats at the Keb’ Mo’ concert, there’s a photo of Keb’ Mo’ and part of his band at upper left. Both musicians are Black men dressed in shades of brown. The band member plays an electric bass and it’s not clear what stringed instrument Keb’ Mo’ is playing. Behind the two men are amplifying equipment, lights, and a deep blue background. At lower right, Deb grins at the camera and model’s G.S. Norwood’s new hat.
Fun at the Keb’ Mo’ concert. (See Credits below.)

Ripples

A couple of weeks ago I scored a few more good friend/bad influence points when I bought two tickets to a Keb’ Mo’ concert at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas. Folks who have followed Mudcat’s Set List, generated as backup material for my novelette, Deep Ellum Blues, have probably heard a couple of Keb’ Mo’s songs. Somehow Deb had missed them. Still, when I asked her if she’d like to come to the concert with me, she didn’t hesitate. “Sure,” she said, which led us to a lovely pre-concert dinner, good conversation, great music, and a pretty cool hat.

Even better, the concert caused some consequential ripples. Deb not only learned to love Keb’ Mo’, she fell head over heels for the Winspear itself. Years ago, when the Dallas Opera still performed at the Music Hall in Fair Park, Deb had season tickets. But when the Winspear opened, ticket prices went up and she stopped going. She’d never been to a performance there before. Now she’s planning to take her daughter to Tosca there in November, and they’re both taking her seven-year-old granddaughter to The Nutcracker in December.

Prompting three generations of awesome women to share the joy of live performances in a wonderful venue? But of course! That’s what good friends/bad influences are for.

In this montage, the images are, clockwise from upper left, the exterior of the Winspear Opera House at night, with its steel grid overhanging flat roof, glass walls, and the inside illuminated with curving red walls. At right is a photo of the inside from one side of the stage, with rows of seats, curving balconies, and the enormous, cone-shaped chandelier of illuminated rainbow-blue crystalline rods hanging down in concentric circles. The rods get longer at the center. At lower right, eleven ballet dancers in white perform part of the classic Christmas ballet, “The Nutcracker.”
The Winspear Opera House. (See Credits below.)

IMAGE CREDITS

There are a lot of people to thank this week. G. S. Norwood collected or took all of the photos. Montages are by Jan S. Gephardt. In the “Good Friends” montage, on the top row L-R we see Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens (Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley) and Holmes and Watson (Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson from The Hound of the Baskervilles 1939). Lower row, L-R: Rebecca and Keeley from TTed Lasso (Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca Welton and Juno Temple as Keeley Jones) and Lucy and Ethel from I Love Lucy (Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo and Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz from I Love Lucy “Desert Island”).

Buying Under “Bad” Influences

In the second montage, Deborah Crombie snapped the photo of G. S. Norwood with the Black 2009 45th Anniversary Edition Mustang GT she’d talked her into buying. G. S. Norwood took the photo of the Ruby Red 2014 Mustang GT—the one that replaced the black one. The “GT” Logo is courtesy of LMR, the Late Model Restoration Shop. The third image shows some of the two friends’ pens and journals: the photos of Deb’s Benu pens, ink, and ink journal were taken by Deb. G. S. Norwood took the photos of some of her pens, journals and ink. Behind them, more pens fill a ceramic pen holder by Janet Rodriguez of Hart Street Pottery.

The Joy of Live Performances

The fourth montage shows glimpses from the Keb’ Mo’ performance at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas, TX. Deborah Crombie took the photo of Keb’ Mo’ and part of his band onstage. G. S. Norwood took the photos of Deb modeling G.’s new hat and a view of the Winspear’s chandelier from their seats at the concert. And the final one shows two views of the Winspear Opera House, courtesy of the Dallas Opera Website: exterior at night, upper left; interior (with chandelier) at right. Plus, at bottom left, a scene from a Texas Ballet Theater production of The Nutcracker. Many thanks to all!

Comments are closed.