Company Blog

Uncommon Commonality

by webmaster — September 7, 2016

Here’s to you, Marc Homan.

My roommate from my sophomore year in college died last week. It was very sudden and unexpected. We were roommates in 1983-1984 and were paired by the University. We both had filled out the “I know no one so I’m trusting the school to pair me with a compatible roommate” questionnaires. I don’t think the school even looked at them. He was in the Navy officer-training program. I had seen “An Officer and a Gentleman”. He was handsome. Very handsome. (At his memorial Friday we learned that some of the wives who knew him referred to him as Commander Yummy – he would have been very embarrassed, but knowingly flattered). He had lots of dates. And girlfriends. LOTS. (If I only had a dollar for the number of times I had to vacate the room on his date nights…) He stayed up late. He was loud and gregarious. He was very muscular. He needed to shave every day. He was very athletic. He was in a fraternity. He could drink like a fish, swear like a sailor, party like a rock star and still be at 8:00 a.m. mass looking like he had got a solid 10 hours of sleep. His friends were all cool. He hung out with the most beautiful girls on campus. All of those things I was not or could not do. Not even close. The only things we had in common were that we kept our room very clean and our moms were both named Lila. But we were good roommates. We didn’t fight (like I would have had a chance anyway, but not even verbal fights). We respected each other and we lived a very happy school year together. After that year there was no talk of getting a place together the next year. We shook hands at the end of the year, thanked each other for a good year and pretty much went our separate ways. I saw him occasionally on campus or at parties, but that was it. One year together in a 12’x10’ room was pretty much all the commonality we would ever share. Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, we were able to see what each other was up to on Facebook. We had way more in common 30 years later. He has two kids. He lived in San Diego. He was divorced after a pretty long marriage and was with his current girlfriend for over ten years. He liked sports and great food. He was into Crossfit and in extremely great shape. OK, those last two we didn’t have in common.

The point is that with almost nothing in common you can still learn and be a better person. It could be with customers, employees or vendors. It doesn’t even take much effort.

His good friends called him Homey. I called him Marc. Here’s to you, Marc Homan. Thanks for making my first year in San Diego so memorable.