I was ready to enter the airport with my bags for my flight, and I saw only one way of ending the phone call with my mother on a good note.

“I’m gonna make plans to come home as soon as I get back to Atlanta,” I told her.

“But you’re already here. All you need to do is reschedule your flight.”

I wasn’t planning on doing that.

“Mom, I’m at the airport, and I’m catching my plane. Now, when I get back to Atlanta, I’ll look at my schedule, and I’ll make a definite date to fly into Gary to see you and then Juanita in Indianapolis.”

I needed to look Juanita in her face anyway.

“Mmm, hmm,” my mother grumbled, “and how long will that take?”

That meant she agreed to it, she just had to see me carry out the plans.

“I’ll call you back later on tonight and let you know,” I told her. “But I really have to go now.”

“Mmm, hmm, tell me anything,” she pouted.

I hung up with my mother and shook my head with a smile. Imagine her being with a man. Nothing ever seemed good enough.

I printed out my e-ticket, showed my boarding pass, made it through the security checkpoint, and headed to my gate for my flight to Atlanta.

In the middle of my walk to the gate, someone called my name from the sports bar and restaurant to my left.

I looked over and spotted Jerry White from my high school basketball days at West Gary. He was sitting on a bar stool with coffee on the counter. He had picked up a considerable amount of weight and had a full beard and thick mustache, but I still recognized his boyish face. The dark facial hair fit well with his deep brown skin tone. He looked like a throwback to the seventies when thick beards and mustaches were cool for black men.

I walked over to him with a little bit of time to kill. My gate was only a few feet away.

“Hey Jerry, long time no see, man.”

We smacked palms like we were still members of the basketball team. I sat beside him on a bar stool.

He said, “I’ve been seeing your face everywhere, man—magazines, billboards, television. Who would ever think you would do that?”

I stopped him short and said, “You haven’t seen me on any television ads yet.” He was going a little overboard with that one.

“That’s up next though, ain’t it?” he assumed.

“Yeah, we’ll see. So, what’s been going on with you, man? I see you’ve been eating well.”

He chuckled at it. “Still Terrance,” he commented on my persistent candor. He said, “But yeah, that’s about all I can say lately. I’m still eatin’.”

The bartender asked me if I wanted anything. I told him a glass of water with ice in it.

“What have you been involved in lately?” I repeated to my old teammate.

Jerry shook his head. “Baby mommas for the most part. I got three of ’em now.”