December 9, 1981

I sat down and looked Dick directly in the eye.

"Dick, how much longer do you plan to stay around?"

That led off a bizarrely interesting hour conversation, the conversation that I fantasized about dozens of times. We discussed the dress code incident, which I was introduced to at my first department head meeting, telling him his handling of that fiasco led to a damaging and irrevocable loss of trust and respect. We discussed his "chatterer" qualities. Dick confessed to being lonely: Genie works a different shift and most weekends to boot; Gregg is in his own apartment now; Thomas is extremely busy with his various high school activities. I can't really sympathize. Springfield provided me with all the loneliness I could handle, but I put the time to constructive use.