Category: Freckles

Forever’s Gone Away

I don’t recall much from my high school graduation. I imagine that one of my pretty classmates spoke of cherished memories, another book-smart classmate predictably mentioned hard work and determination, and the winner of the popularity contest (read: class president elections) probably paraphrased the Army’s “Be All You Can Be” campaign while Boys II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday” played over the speakers like the hidden song on the soundtrack of our lives. One thing I do remember, though, is the sight of many of my classmates shedding tears as they mourned the closing of the latest chapter of their lives and, while most passed it off as a sadness for the inevitable loss of their trivial friendships, I suspect their tears had more to do with the fear of the unknown. For most of my classmates who were conditioned to follow the pack in a desperate attempt to maintain an appearance of normality, high school graduation brought with it a terrifying world where those who thought for themselves and embraced individuality advanced, and those who didn’t stayed behind to reminisce about the “Glory Days.”

As for myself, when my high school principal stood up in the unforgiving, sweltering school gymnasium heat that June day and announced to my class that we had finally graduated high school and were now officially free to do as we pleased, I followed his advice and left, looking back only once to get one last glimpse of the school I hated and the sheepish classmates I never knew. Maybe I was ahead of my time, maybe my older sisters had given me insight into my future, and maybe my experience in those four years was just that miserable; all I know is when I left high school, I knew that the best years of my life would be found ahead of me on a path I had yet to create, rather than on the paved road of high school I was leaving behind. What I never realized was how quickly those years would pass by me.

One of my high school classmates emailed me the other day to notify me of our impending rite of passage into a quarter-life crisis: the 10 year high school reunion; that stressful evening spent with the people you hardly knew, pretending that you want to know them now, and while silently hoping they care more about your life than you do about theirs. I haven’t officially decided whether or not I’m going to attend this once-in-a-lifetime event but I won’t lie, I probably won’t. Considering I’m in touch with all of the people from high school with whom I wish to have meaningful friendships, I just can’t find all that much to be gained from my attendance. Regardless, however, the invitation has left me amazed at how helpless the passage of time makes me feel.

This past weekend, I mourned the loss of another year of my life as I celebrated my 28th birthday. Freckles treated me to dinner Friday night and, though she’ll tell you otherwise, she cooked a delicious meal. She then joined me Saturday on a hike up Vermont’s second tallest mountain, Camel’s Hump, whose peak ranks in my top five all-time favorite spots in the state. Though our stay at the top of the mountain was cut short in order to make our dinner date on time, the feelings of accomplishment inspired by the magnificent views, made it well worth the climb. The hike down the mountain in the lightening storm made me second-guess our trip, however. On the other hand, Freckles, author of the constant barrage of reminders sent my way at how important it is to live in the present rather than dwell on the future and the “what ifs?”, was impressively calm as we descended in the rain, serenaded by thunder.

Saturday night, Freckles and I met up for dinner with The Benchlys, Sister #1, her husband, Niece #1, and Niece #2. The night, which appeared to be capping off a perfect birthday, nearly turned tragic when Mama Benchly began to struggle for air, her face flushed from fear and pain. While I was paralyzed by an anxious shock, my brother in law, a volunteer fireman, stepped in to take charge of the situation and quickly determined that her airway was blocked, not by food, but by the swelling from an allergic reaction caused by the mushrooms stuffed with crabmeat my mother had mistakenly consumed moments earlier. When a handful of hits from her inhaler provided little to no relief, my brother in law ran to the store next-door and returned soon after with Benadryl, an antihistamine often used to combat allergic reactions. Mama Benchly downed the Benadryl while an imaginary crowd of fraternity brothers cheered her on and shortly thereafter, her breathing began to improve.

While Mama Benchly’s breathing, though still somewhat pained, returned to normal, the evening’s lessons learned of the fragility of the mortal life put me in a thoughtful mood from which I have yet to emerge. Stated simply, my mother’s allergic reaction was the scariest sight I had ever witnessed in my short life, and, on a day spent celebrating the latest year of my life, it served to remind me of how quickly life can be taken from us and, as Freckles always says, that our lives are too short for us to spend much time worrying about the hundred different potential consequences of our actions.

And so here I sit 10 years after my high school graduation and four days into my 28th year, awaiting word from the representatives from another Vermont publishing company with whom I interviewed this morning. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be offered this editing job, which will point my career in the right direction while allowing me more time to write. But if, for whatever reason, I failed to properly sell myself and my skills to the interviewers, I’ll be able to sleep at night because I’ll know that my life was too short for me not to have tried at all.

Have I told you lately…

Each morning, after meeting up with Freckles and/or The Doctor for our daily car pool, and passing the other commuters (who, after many years of commuting, I have begun to recognize, sadly), and dealing with all the road rage and construction, and silently pretending that all the roadkill doesn’t bother me, I exit the interstate onto the access road that winds its way down an unending hill into the depressing granite town in which we work, and I peak my head around the off-ramp corner to see the spray-painted message that has been waiting for me on the interstate overpass bridge each and every weekday of my career: “Have I told you lately…”

The first day I saw this message, I understandably expected the second half to be spray-painted onto the second overpass bridge, but I was unpleasantly surprised to find the conclusion missing. As I’m sure most other drivers have done, I wondered aloud a number of different questions: What’s the second half of the message? Is it what I thought it was going to be? Is what I thought it was going to be any different from what everyone else thought it would be? Did the graffitist suffer heartache after spray-painting the first bridge and before marking the second one? Did he/she get arrested for vandalism? Why hasn’t it been erased after all this time?

In the (too many) number of years that I’ve been commuting to this job, I’ve had ample time to concoct my own story behind the “Have I told you lately…” graffiti. The abridged story that I’ve come up with goes something like this: a 17 year old boy, in love for the first time in his life, having decided to tell the world and his love of this love, spray painted the first half of the message onto the bridge. After marking the last of the ellipses, he slipped and fell to the ground, and just as he stood to shake off the gravel and shock that accompanies such a painful but survivable fall, a car heading under the overpass plowed into him; a collision that ultimately killed him. His girlfriend, on her way home in tears after cheating on her first love, climbed out of her car, fell to the ground next to her dying boyfriend, and though she tried to tell him one last time of her love, she could not find the words through her tears of guilt. And so, in yet another fictional poetic (read: ironic) twist for which I am infamous (subconsciously inspired by my first girlfriend in high school), both the girl’s and the boy’s words of love remained unspoken.

This story that I’ve created in my head is a product of the imagination-inspiring past-time of people-watching, a game that Montana Girl, Sarah the L, and I have perfected over the years. The object of the game is basically to come up with a back story for anyone and everyone who crosses your path. The more random and troubling the story, the better the entertainment value. Until I started contemplating how to write this blog entry, I never really understood why I liked the people-watching game so much. And then it hit me.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I don’t deal well with the unknown. Try to slip an inside joke by me, try to keep a secret from me, whisper something to someone else in my presence, tell me “I’ll tell you later,” and all I will do is make it my life mission to find out what I’m missing. I think this stems from my own insecurities (ie, my fear of being left out or isolated) and try as I might to obsess a little less, and relax a little more, I can’t. And thanks to another one of my insecurities (ie, my fear of rejection), in the absence of a certain truth, I react in the worst possible way: I invent my own idea of the truth that is far worse than any reality I’ll ever experience in my life. As you can imagine, in the past, whenever I’ve entered into a new relationship where uncertainty is always part of my daily diet, my insecurities have always stood guard with their knees shaking in front of my emotions, which brings me ever so transparently to the next paragraph; the one for which you’ve all been waiting.

Freckles and I have been spending quite a bit of time together the last few weeks and, as I’m sure you all would have been able to guess had I asked you to guess, that’s a bit of an understatement. Evidently, I wasn’t lying in my previous posting when I said I wouldn’t stand a chance in her 2-hours-a-day presence. It didn’t take long for either of us to realize that something special was developing between us and it didn’t take long after that for both of us to say something about it. We don’t know each other very well – only as well as a handful of weeks could possibly allow – but based on what I’ve discovered, I’ve learned that I want to know more.

I like Freckles. Among a million other unnamed positive traits, I like her intelligence, her insecurities, her humor, her stubbornness, her loyalty, her humbleness, her beauty, her fragility, her sincerity, and her purity. I think, above all else, though, what I find most endearing in her is that she has the same fears and questions that I have. She does not take me lightly and from this, I whole-heartedly believe that she never will. And the benefit to a relationship begun with both people involved eyeing potential heartache like a cub’s mother eyes a wolf a mile away, is that although we both feel drawn to each other, I get the sense that we’re both willing to go at a much slower pace than the one to which I’m accustomed.

It’s early yet, I know, and there are a number of unanswered questions and unfinished thoughts spray-painted in a clear and bold font on the side of a bridge, but though, from time to time, our imaginations and insecurities may get the best of our respective fears of heartache and lead us to answer those questions and finish those thoughts with irrational conclusions, I’m finding sweet solace in the fact that each new day that I spend with Freckles brings with it one more extraordinary reason to stay with her.

And then: you close your eyes, hope for the best, and jump.

The One With the Prom Video

Montana Girl and I recently went to see the new movie Batman Begins and unlike most Hollywood blockbusters out there, this one worked for me but not for the action-packed fight scenes or the logic-defying special effects. What I loved more than anything else about this movie were the many quiet scenes where the title character struggled with morality and grief and fear and all the other dramatic feelings that accompany a dramatic movie. As we were leaving the theatre, I thought about my favorite action movies and how my favorite moments from those movies rarely involve a punch or a gunshot or an explosion but rather an ironic statement or a genuine and heartfelt expression.

Saving Private Ryan was praised by critics for its realistic depictions of the violent World War II but the one scene that I remember more than most occurred between battles. Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks) sat in a deserted German-destroyed French town with Private Ryan (Matt Damon), doing his best to comfort Ryan after breaking the news to him of his brothers’ deaths. Ryan said he couldn’t picture what his brothers looked like and Miller said that was because they needed to be placed into context. Miller then gave an example of how when he wants to think of his wife back home, he pictures her in their backyard pruning the rosebushes. Ryan then told a story of his brothers and ended it by asking Miller to describe his wife and the rosebushes. Miller’s response was simply, “No, no that one I save just for me.”

A lot has happened to me in the last few weeks and because I’m a perfectionist who couldn’t quite think of the proper way to document the events of my life in my blog, I basically neglected to mention any of the events at all. And consequently, you’ve missed quite a bit lately, which I’m going to try to do my best to recap now.

For starters, thanks to some insider information from my coworker Soccer Mom (named as such because she’s totally turning into one), I took the plunge and awkwardly asked Freckles if she would like to carpool with me and The Doctor. After warning me about her “bad…I’m talking off-the-road-bad” driving, she eagerly accepted my offer and we made plans to begin carpooling the next week. And from the very first car pool conversation with her (that, incidentally, touched upon nearly every taboo carpooling subject), I knew I would be thankful of my decision to include her in my commuting world. Quite simply, she’s someone I already want in my life.

In other news, Montana Girl and I ventured to the disc golf course 30 minutes away a handful of times in the past few weeks and thanks to another player with whom we played a round one day (an older man by the nicknameless name of Xander), who taught me a proper sidearm throw, my game has been substantially improved; and thanks to my always reliable backhand throw, I was able to birdie the first hole of my life, which, to be honest, was a bigger thrill than most people would ever expect it to be. Shortly thereafter, Montana Girl’s employer treated the two of us to a free blues concert and VIP tent pass at B’town’s recent Jazz Festival. Despite the fact that I declined the chance to eat frog legs, I had a great time and got to hear awesome music.

A few days later, Sarah the L, Smoochie Poo, and I checked out a free Grace Potter concert but decided to leave early to avoid the inevitable 300-degree gymnasium evaporation. We then headed to a nearby softball field to check out a local women’s league softball game and quietly debated the homo-hetero ratio on each team. (My conservative 40-60 guess turned out to be a liberal one. In other words, there weren’t as many lesbian players as you would stereotypically think there would be.) We finally ended up at Sarah and Smoochie’s home where we ate some awesome homemade pizza and listened to Sarah play/practice/relearn her set-list for an upcoming open-mic performance. This quiet, private performance turned into an appropriate preparation when Sarah nixed her open-mic performance in favor of a quiet, public one on the Church Street Marketplace. For just over an hour that night, Smoochie Poo and I, as well as the Nomad, the Homeless Drunk, and the Paraplegic sat on the street and enjoyed some beautiful poetry told in sweet melodies.

And then the rains came and four days later, they have yet to cease, which I’m finding to be something placed perfectly between miserable and pretty. Every day feels like the moment before you’ve had enough time to learn whether or not someone is shedding tears of joy or sorrow; the world is crying, but why? And it makes me think back to all the confusing and mixed emotions I was feeling in the restaurant parking lot in the pouring rain that night. But that….that I’ll save just for me.

The (Commuting) Choices We Make

I slept in this morning, which is a luxury my new car now allows me to afford. But as I drove to work on the interstate, my thoughts were not of the sweet dreams I had had after my alarm clock sounded, or the joys one feels while driving a nice new car, but rather of the money I was soon going to be losing should I continue to drive solo to work every day.

I recently talked to The Doctor about carpooling again. He’s open to the idea but because of his current physical therapy schedule and his son’s daycare schedule, he can’t start for a few weeks. We’ve made plans to meet in the park ‘n’ ride lot in mid-June, so now I’m trying to determine my best commuting option until then. For as long as it is federally funded, however inconvenient it may be, the Loser Cruiser is always an option. But last night’s drive home brought with it an interesting plot twist to my life:

I left work last night shortly after the Toad hopped away (only Sarah will get this reference) and headed to the parking lot to find my still-unnamed vehicle (the latest suggestions: Silver-Door Dolly, Silver Otto, Jane Honda, Rhonda, Carmine, Gertrude, and Timothy) parked next to a blue car being opened by the new girl, Freckles. We both started our cars and Freckles took a right turn out of the parking lot with me close behind her. 45 minutes later, we both took the same South Burlington exit before finally heading in different directions into town.

Evidently, it seems that Freckles makes the same daily commute as I do and so she could very well be interested in carpooling with me, and then in mid-June, with me and The Doctor. This was news to me, because, as will not be news to you, in the two or three weeks that she has worked here, I’ve said less than 10 words to her. Although the silent treatment I’ve given Freckles has everything to do with the fact that she’s a new employee and that it generally takes me 2 to 3 months to be comfortable enough with someone to randomly talk to him/her (those irrational trust issues again), I’m now hesitant to address this commuting issue with her for a completely separate reason: she’s unfairly cute (and yes, Sarah, she’s wife cute).

You see, I have a history of carpooling with attractive women. In the 5 years that I’ve been carpooling, it has happened twice: Veronica Japanica (named as such in honor of her car’s nickname) and Widget (named as such because this is what Veronica Japanica called her). While both carpools ultimately ended, only one ended positively. Veronica and I were roommates, coworkers, and carpool buddies meaning that on any given day, we spent close to 16 hours in each other’s company. Strangely enough, it worked out just fine because we were friends who had separate lives.

When Veronica moved away, however, my next carpooling buddy taught me an invaluable life lesson: like beer and milk, coworkers that date and carpool do not mix. (The only thing more dangerous is dating a roommate, which is like mixing vodka with engine oil.) As I briefly mentioned in a past entry, Widget and I started dating a few months after we began carpooling and what seemed to be a wonderfully convenient situation quickly turned into a depressingly uncomfortable one post-break-up. The months at work that followed our break-up were nothing short of a hell where you’re forced to drink milk/beer/engine oil cocktails.

After Widget and I crashed and burned (though, not literally, thankfully), gas prices and my budget were such that I still needed to carpool, but for my sanity’s sake, I needed to carpool with someone for whom there would be no chance of falling. The Doctor was a healthy alternative because he is one of the nicest individuals I have ever met, he’s a good friend, his sense of humor is unrivaled, and well, he’s a he. The Doctor and I started carpooling and continued to do so successfully for close to a year until the infamous Inga Overheating Incident. Ever since then, it’s been the Loser Cruiser all the way with the occasional solo commutes in Mama or Papa Benchly’s vehicles and the always treasured moments spent in Inga and Sarah the L’s Daisy (after we both missed the LC).

Now that I’m a member of the car-owners’ club, I’m struggling to decide if I should ask Freckles to join The Doctor and me in our quest to save the planet while simultaneously saving money. On one hand, she will help to reduce the priceless wear-and-tear mileage on our vehicles while we all pocket loads of cash. On the other hand, she’s young, she’s intelligent (I even think she has an English degree!), she’s cute, and I wouldn’t stand a chance in her 2-hours-a-day presence. As I post this, I still don’t know what I’m going to do.

After sleeping in this morning, I left for work approximately 20 minutes after the Loser Cruiser typically leaves the bus station in the morning. When I caught up with the Loser Cruiser on the highway, I knew she was running a little late (Deane doesn’t drive slowly). As I passed the bus and returned to the right lane, bringing the Loser Cruiser into my rearview mirror, I realized that I am reluctantly closing one commuting chapter in my book, while anxiously looking ahead to the story that awaits me on the next page. Hopefully this story has a happy ending.