In one of the last conversations with my friend, Jean-Claude Petit, he told me to make sure to give him a “good write-up” when he passed away.
He made the request about a month ago while we were sitting around J’s Restaurant where he had worked six days a week for 33 years. He had just been given word the cancer he had fought for four years had come back and was terminal. This was especially cruel since just months before he was told he was in remission, something we all celebrated before having our hopes dashed.
So, how do I do it justice? Sure, I write obits all the time but it’s rare when it’s a close, personal friend. I mean how many people have friends who will lunge out of the kitchen as you walk by with a 10-inch carving knife and miss your nose by an inch? This is especially worrisome given the size of my nose.
“You come for the special?” he would ask in his French accent as he balled up his fist and threw a punch that would miss me by a whisper. “There’s your special.”
He called himself the problem solver, noting I was the problem and he was coming to solve it.
“You’re going down, Frenchie,” I would reply, throwing a punch in retort. “I’m putting you through a table today.”
This would, of course, catch the attention of customers, some of whom would assume the chef and I were going at it. To this, Jean-Claude would smile and reassure the customers, one of whom I think was calling 911, the spectacle was us just having fun.
“They are my friends,” Jean-Claude would tell the surprised customers, pointing to me and Seth Wright. “We are just messing around.”
Wait. Let me slow down. The reason for our actions was our mutual love of wrestling. I and Jean-Claude started talking wrestling one day at J’s and we became fast friends. We spent many evenings going to wrestling events and watching wrestling shows with our wrestling buddies.
I always enjoyed Jean-Claude’s wide-eyed amazement about wrestling. He always wanted to see what went on behind the scenes, speculating whether the wrestlers were friends after they beat “the ‘oly ‘ell” out of one another, as he always put it. You should have heard him back when he had an accent.
However, when a wrestling promoter asked him point blank one night if he wanted to know the truth, Jean-Claude paused for a moment and shook his head – “No, I guess not.”
I’ll miss the shenanigans we had at J’s. There was one time when, right before a ladder match wrestling show, Seth and I returned to find our lunches sitting atop an eight-foot ladder he had positioned at our table. Oh, and there was the time he stole my car while I was eating at J’s. That was a hoot. Oh, and the time he nearly knocked out Seth with the sneeze guard at the salad bar. It just won’t be the same without my favorite chef sneaking up behind me, trying to deliver a bionic elbow while I’m eating lunch.
Au revoir, my friend.
Standard reporter Duane Sherrill can be reached at 473-2191.