A Gregtastic Surprise
As I’ve mentioned before, Greg Parker was my childhood neighbor on the other side of my parents' house from the Andersons, and he is my “brother” in the same way they are my “sisters.” The last time I saw him was when he, his wife, Temi, and their daughter (who we will call Blessing) came to visit us two years ago.
After our dinner at North Star, Arden drove Paige and me back to Summit Crest. We were back inside by 8:00. At 8:06, Greg texted me, “Yo, I’m in town till Monday. Want to get a drink?” I immediately called him, and eventually we decided to go to Old North Arcade the next day.
At 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, February 15, 2026, Greg picked Paige and me up, and we drove to the arcade. As we got in the car, we said hi and gave him his and Temi’s invite for our wedding. I couldn’t help but feel déjà vu from 24 hours before.
When we walked into the arcade, Greg was clearly awestruck. “Have you really never been here?” I asked.
“No,” he replied with a chuckle. It made sense. I hadn’t discovered the arcade until about 9 months after his wedding, and he met Temi in college. He definitely wasn’t going to find a local bar in high school.
After getting our drinks and sitting down, Paige started digging for embarrassing childhood stories. This led us to talk about my imaginary girlfriend, Christina. While she appears in The Greattastic Adventures 2: Fractured and was “reincarnated” as Natalie in the Season 1 finale in this series, in both cases, I used her for very specific narrative reasons. In other words, Christina's “life” was a little more far-reaching than it was written in the book.
At the end of that conversation, we started playing some of the arcade games. We played Qbert, Super Mario Kart, Asteroids, and a few others. Greg and I specifically played a game of air hockey, and I think this is the only thing that I’ve ever beaten him at. When he dropped us back off at Summit Crest around 5:50, he told Paige, “Congratulations on not being imaginary!”
We got out of his car, and we waved as he drove away. Greg went to Cornell in 2016, and since then, I have only written about him 6 times. The first time is in Greattastic Adventurers 3 (which admittedly has not been published yet; I will do an update soon). His next appearance chronologically is the Season 4 installment, Groomsman (which is about him coming to town and asking me to be in his wedding). Then I did a three-part installment about his wedding, and in Season 5, I wrote an installment called Maintaining The Empire about him and me catching up after not seeing each other since the wedding. In Season 7, I wrote about his sister’s wedding, and then I wrote about when he, Temi, and Blessing came to visit (Emotional Reset).
I’m bringing up his previous appearances because, outside of my next book, up to this point, Greg has only come back to Columbus for, or because of, a special event. The difference between Greg and, say, the Andersons is that, while we have remained at the same level of friend and they are all in different phases of life than I am, the Andersons and I have still grown together, whereas Greg is off in his own bubble. This is the first time since he got married that he and I have been able to be friends in person in normal circumstances, and I hope to continue this going forward!
Have a Greattastic day and day and be safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri, SBT
No comments:
Post a Comment