One thing I loved about Willie was he would call me out of the blue to talk to me about nothing, and most of the time it was him talking and me listening, just trying to get a word in edgewise.  Sometimes he would call to do a little name-dropping on who had been hanging out with.  He called after he hung out with Matt Hasselbeck in the locker room to tell me that he thought he’d played it pretty cool, and that he was sure Matt thought he was pretty awesome.  He called to tell me he had just had drinks with Rod Stewart.  Right after the WaMu theater opened, he called to tell me about all famous people he was meeting, like Seal, although he was disappointed that Seal didn’t bring Heidi Klum along with him.  I, of course, brought him right back down to earth by saying, ‘yeah you got to hang out with Seal, but you also had to go to a Barney (the purple dinosaur) Live! show.’ 

Sometimes he would call to sing some stupid song that he had just thought of.  Sometimes he would call to tell me some random fact that he thought I needed to know.  Sometimes he would call just to see what was going on, and find out the latest thing Jayden was doing.  Sometimes he would call in the morning on his way to work, and I would give him a bad time about driving into work at 10am, and he would give me a bad time for quitting my well paying job. 

The last time Willie called, he was driving home from work.  I was trying to finish cooking dinner and entertaining Jayden at the same time, and was feeling a bit frazzled, and I remember thinking, ‘how the heck am i going to get him off the phone?’  Because a phone call with Willie was never short.  I am so glad now that I couldn’t get a word in to tell him I’d call him later.  I probably would have never had a chance to have this phone call again, and this was one of my favorite kind of calls, the kind where you got to see the quirky side of Willie, the rainbow-colored airstream trailer side of Willie. 

He started off by saying, ‘Rach, you’re never going to believe this, but I have been right all along’ (big surprise).  He was calling to tell me that he had finally figured out that the guy who sang the songs from the movie “You’ve Got Mail”, that our mom loves, was the same guy who sang the songs from the movie “The Point”.  What made him decide after all this time to find out who the guy was?  Who knows.  But most of the time we couldn’t figure out what was really going on inside that head of his.  I said, ‘oh yea, I already knew that, his name is Harry Nilsson’.  Willie couldn’t believe that I already knew that, so he decided to throw in another bit of info.  He said, ‘Did you know that ‘The Point’ was narrated by Ringo Star?’  Now, that, I did not know.  So, he goes off for awhile about Ringo Star and The Point, and we start talking about the songs again.  Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, of me trying to cook dinner, of me trying to keep Jayden out of all the cupboards, one of my favorite things happened, Willie and I started singing a stupid song, cracking up the whole time, seeing who could remember the words the best.  We started singing “Think About Your Troubles”, the song during the movie when poor Oblio was sitting by the river crying.

Sit beside the breakfast table
Think about your troubles
Pour yourself a cup of tea
Then think about the bubbles
You can take your teardrops
And drop ‘em in a teacup
Take them down to the riverside

And throw them over the side
To be swept up by a current
Then taken to the ocean
To be eaten by some fishes
Who were eaten by some fishes
And swallowed by a whale
Who grew so old
He decomposed, doo, doo, doo

He died and left his body
To the bottom of the ocean
Now everybody knows
That when a body decomposes
The basic elements
Are given back to the ocean
And the sea does what it oughta

And soon there’s salty water
Not too good for drinking
‘Cause it tastes just like a teardrop
So they run it through a filter
And it comes out from a faucet
And it pours into a teapot
Which is just about to bubble
Now think about your troubles, now
 

I miss these phone calls from Willie.  I never knew when they would come or what we would talk about.  But I find myself during Jayden’s morning nap or while cooking dinner waiting for the phone to ring, waiting to hear another piece of information that might only be good if I liked playing trival pursuit.  I find it really hard to accept that I won’t get another phone call from him, that I am going to have to wait for what seems like forever to sing another song with him, to see who knows the lyrics the best to ‘Ice Ice Baby’, to see who can count to the highest prime number, to listen to him ramble on about his airplanes or his motorcycle or countless other topics I know nothing about, to listen to him tell me what he thinks I should do or what I should buy.  What I wouldn’t give for one more “last” random phone call.