Category: Lay-Off March

Sometimes Life Gives Us Lessons Sent in Ridiculous Packaging

As it has every year, the Little League World Series has signaled the impending demise of the summer as well as all summer-related activities that have so mercilessly wedged themselves between my creativity and my blogging time. Each night, the boys of summer race to finish their seasons before the chill rains of fall arrive. After sacrificing my body on the softball field every day to help keep my men’s league team’s playoff hopes alive, I’ve spent my nights watching 10-12-year-old Little Leaguers pour their hearts onto a smaller field to help keep their dreams alive.

In an effort to keep this experience as rewarding as possible, I’ve done my best to avoid all the swearing, fighting, and anger that nearly always accompanies a men’s beer-drinking softball league; I’m there to have fun and play an innocent and beautiful game I’ve loved since my Little League days. And so, it’s disheartening to learn of recent Little League events that have shown a loss of that very same purity I’ve tried so desperately to recapture…

In a 9 and 10 year old Utah league, the team playing defense needed one more out to win the championship by one run. All that stood between them and their (read: their coach’s) dream, was the opposing team’s best hitter. But rather than take the opportunity to teach his young team about courage and playing their best, the coach decided to teach his team about strategy that’s only appropriate at a much higher level of play. He instructed his pitcher to intentionally walk the best hitter to face the worst hitter: a cancer survivor with a shunt in his brain. The boy struck out while the fans booed the pitcher, and the winning team’s coach got his trophy.

A Little League New England game between Vermont and New Hampshire also made headlines thanks to more controversial coaching. With his team up by a run and one out away from winning the game, the VT coach realized that one of his players had not yet batted; a rule violation that guaranteed a forfeit. Understanding that the only way for his team to win the game was if NH tied it and forced extra innings, he instructed his pitcher to intentionally throw wildly to let NH score. The NH coach quickly realized what VT was trying to do and promptly instructed his team to lose the game at all costs by swinging and intentionally missing the wild pitches; ignoring VT’s third baseman who stopped wiping away the tears from his eyes long enough to beg the NH coach to “please let him hit it.” NH struck out, lost the game, ultimately won by forfeit, and now stands two wins away from a Little League World Series title.

It’s sad to think that the once-in-a-lifetime/rewarding memories these kids will take away from this summer will most likely be overshadowed by the instances when the adults in their lives chose to manipulate their experiences by injecting the kind of reprehensible morals that only adults are capable of displaying. Because of this, I’ve found myself thankful for my own less-tainted childhood memories.

As a child of the 80s, my memories, at first glance, are carbon copies of everyone else’s: Little League, We are the World, Hot Wheels, Swatches, Transformers, Bill Buckner, Bill Cosby, MTV, Reagan, the Challenger, Fraggle Rock, etc. Although it’s slightly comforting to think about how I’m connected with millions of people through these memories, as an individualist, however, I’m also alarmed. Didn’t I have any unique experiences? Isn’t there a memory that only I can claim as my own? I’ll worry about that in another entry; for now though, I’ll focus on one other memory from my childhood: the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

For those of you who lived in a cave, or maybe Vermont, the Choose Your Own Adventure books led readers like myself through an exciting plot full of twists M. Night Shymalan could only dream of imagining and at nearly every turn, when the characters were faced with an important choice, the reader decided what to do next. Go to p. 47 if you choose to fight the rabid 1200-pound dog. Flip back to p. 39 if you want to escape in a helicopter with the cute girl. And just like in life, the first instinct, the seemingly obvious choice, isn’t necessarily the right one. If you turned to p. 39, you discovered you crashed the helicopter and became trapped in quicksand. If you cheated (and we all did) and then flipped to p. 47 anyway, the 1200-pound dog wasn’t rabid at all…just a lonely dog wanting to play fetch who ultimately led you to safety. Like snowflakes, no two Choose Your Own Adventures were alike, and so, in a way, I can consider these books to be my own unique childhood memory. And as has been the case in most of my entries, this revelation is directly related to the most recent events of my life. If you disagree, your helicopter has crashed and you are stuck in quicksand. If you agree, flip to the next paragraph…

When I was 4-months-fresh out of college, I accepted a unionized position at the Evil Empire, earning more than twice as much money as I had ever made in my life. (Of course, that’s not saying much when you consider my paper route/work study/sandwich shop/telemarketer/camp counselor background.) Within the first two hours of employment, the union representative was smothering me like a toddler on her newborn sister, and I was ordered to join the union and pay dues for this representation. Always the one to respond to orders as if they were given on Opposite Day, the adventure I chose was to join the union “under protest”; although represented by the union, I gave up my vote and voice in exchange for a world without dues. (At 22, I considered getting out of paying money to strangers as a wise financial decision.)

Through numerous twists and turns I won’t discuss, it can be argued that my refusal to join the rabid-dog union led me safely through the 5 or 6 Lay-Off Marches to my current and much more English-degree-appropriate Evil Empire job. Like Marty saving the peeping-Tom George McFly, this decision made in the blink of an eye changed the course of my history. I won’t argue that my snap judgment was better than a carefully planned decision, however. Stated simply, the down-the-long-road fortunate effects of my choice were pure dumb luck and like the former Lay-Off March victims, my fortunes can change on a dime.

And so, yesterday, as I sat there and listened to the familiar “in an effort to remain competitive” speech, and quickly realized that I was most likely one year away from my very own Lay-Off March, I couldn’t help but think about those Choose Your Own Adventure books. With the nine lives I’ve lived at the Evil Empire, I feel as though I’ve already flipped to p. 39 to discover the helicopter crash and now I have the chance to take what I know and run to the rabid dog of p. 47. Like the kids of Little League who still have a chance to learn the values of honor and respect and fair play, I still have a chance to leave this place on my terms and discover new adventures. And in doing so, I’ll remember the valuable life lesson inadvertently provided by one more Little League team as it traveled home from a baseball tournament. When the team passed a kiosk selling popcorn, one player excitingly said, “Oh, popcorn! Let’s come back!” Another player responded that they couldn’t come back, “because we’re only 10 for one year.”

The Stolen Child

Part I
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand

One piece of Benchly gossip I neglected to mention in my last entry is what my favorite Christmas present was this past year. As the wrapping-paper dust settled on another Benchly Christmas, Mama and Papa Benchly said, “Don’t forget. [Mr. Benchly] has one more present.” Considering there were no boxes left unopened, I was puzzled and my expression said as much. And it was at this point that everyone in the room turned in my direction and told me in unison that Sister #1 was pregnant. So yes, that’s right, faithful readers, if the fates have their way, Niece #4 will be gracing our presence in August.

It’s been a long time since my last entry. In fact, it’s been more than a month since my discussion of second cousins, and while I’ve been actively responding to other people’s entries, it can safely be said that I haven’t been keeping up with my fair share of the blogging. And for that, I apologize. I’d like to get back into the habit of posting at least two significant entries every week; I just need the will power to do so.

I think it’s fair to say that my relationship with Freckles has affected my writing. Before Freckles, I was lonely, miserable, and filled to the blonde-haired brim with inspiration for meaningful (read: misery-filled) entries. But after that fateful June day when Freckles charmed me by saying she was a “bad, I’m talking off-the-road bad driver,” my focus has been more on her and less on my writing. But I don’t blame her, and you shouldn’t either.

I think Sarah the L will concur with my assertion that writers are most productive in their bitter, heartache days than at any other time in their lives. Knowing this, my new goal in life is to cherish and focus on my happiness while simultaneously channeling the miserable emotions from my past for my writing. If I can find a balance between the two, I believe I’ll be able to be both happy and a good writer.

Fortunately or, more to the point, unfortunately, my life as of late has been filled with some negativity that has Inspiration written all over it. And so, consequently, in this first entry of the new year, I’ll be able to draw on emotions from the present negativity, rather than worry about experimenting with those from the past. But before the negative, first some positive because, as is often the case, there was a poetic quiet before the storm…

As some of my 5 or 6 readers may remember, my last entry described my excitement over the revelation that a member of my family was performing on Broadway. Well, thanks in whole to the unbridled generosity of Freckles’ family (both extended and immediate), 2005 ended with quite a harmonious bang. Following a limo ride from Pennsylvania into New York City, and a rewarding dinner at a fine Italian restaurant in the Broadway district, Freckles’ aunt handed us 6th row center seats to Spamalot (aka, my second cousin’s show). Both the show and my relative were amazing and although I’m slightly bitter that my cousin was a no-show at our last-minute-planned meet-and-greet after the show, I was excited when Freckles and I were able to score autographs from both Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce.

The remainder of our New Year’s trip to Pennsylvania was spent celebrating Freckles’ cousin’s engagement, eating a never-ending supply of delicious snacks and meals, fighting off the little cousins for time on the X-Box (and losing), shopping the outlets, and aiming my paintball gun at the freckled redhead wearing the bright red sweatshirt who was aiming her paintball gun at me. Not only did I discover that I can survive and prosper in a paintball game, I also discovered, thanks to a direct hit to my middle finger, that I won’t ever want to play paintball again. And then, as the sun began to rise on the new year, I stood on the beach and watched the ocean water of my life recede to the horizon at an alarmingly fast rate.

Part II
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand.

Some days, when I’m overwhelmed with the anguish that seems to have set up shop in my world, I can find ample solace in the promise of my sister’s unborn and uncorrupted child. Most days, though, this baby can be only what he/she should be: a sweet footnote to an otherwise tumultuous month.

After enjoying our four-day weekend, Freckles and I returned from our Pennsylvania trip unenthusiastically ready to take on the working world again. First thing Tuesday morning, we were greeted by our company’s president, who read a statement he had been assigned by his bosses to read. As it turned out, the statement was, in effect, our termination notice. The company that owned our company had decided to close shop, move most of the work to a sister company, and offer one-fourth of the workers jobs at a sister company. As luck would have it, Freckles and I found ourselves in the group of workers “traded” to another company. As The Doctor said, “I feel as though I just used my eighth of nine lives here.”

It’s an odd feeling, this feeling of survivor’s guilt at the site of 150 of your coworkers doing the Lay-Off March. These are people with families; some with very little education and/or limited skills who fear the world outside of this small Vermont town they’ve known their whole lives. And yet I still have a job. With that said, although my intentions are still to leave as soon as a better offer comes along, I won’t pretend that the predominant emotion I’ve felt the last month is anything other than relief at having this job on which to fall back. But even so, other events in the month have served as reminders that life is more important than the company from which your next paycheck is coming.

I mentioned earlier that anguish had seemed to lay its roots in my world. I think that that’s the gentlest way to describe the fact that, in the past month, the lives of three of my loved ones have been greatly affected by four instances of cancer. The best friend of one of my best friends lost her fight with cancer earlier this month. And in the past month or so, I learned that the fathers of three wonderful women in my life were diagnosed with various cancers. After looking on from a secondhand point of view, I’ve learned how incredibly helpless one can feel at the hands of this powerful and mysterious sickness.

Again, I think of my sister’s unborn child. When anxiously awaiting all the joyous moments of this soul’s life, it’s difficult to overlook all the heartache that awaits it, too. Why do we do this? Why is it our pleasure to bring children into a world of pain and suffering? It seems that for every child that fulfills her childhood dream of starring on Broadway, there’s one that begins to successfully enter her adult life only to discover a loved one at risk to exit it. But then. Then, there are unexpected moments in your life that bring with them such a clarity that helps you recognize how worthwhile your life is.

And so it was that I found myself in the passenger seat of a car driven by Freckles, shaken up after skidding off the road into a snow bank/ditch, checking to see if Freckles was OK, making sure I was OK, fighting off the inevitable shock to determine what needed to be done, and saying a silent prayer of gratitude for being allowed the opportunity to continue to share my life with someone so special. Yes, the world may be more full of weeping than a child can understand, but as you grow older, you begin to realize that it’s mostly filled with love.

I don’t want to grow up

This morning, Sister #1 sent me pictures of Nieces #1-2 proudly displaying their ballet outfits. I blinked. Evidently, sometime in the last year, my nieces became old enough to walk through the young child’s rite of passage into ballet class. I showed the pictures to Freckles who, after seeing how adorable they were, as well as the Barbie dream house in the background, declared her jealousy. I asked her if she was jealous of a 4-year-old’s life and she said, “Life was a lot easier when I was 4. Although it is all relative, so it probably seemed tough at the time.”

I know that Sarah the L will agree with a shout out to rival any southern-Baptist “amen!” when I say that I’ve been working at my current job for far too long. For awhile, I rationalized my immobility with a number of valid-only-on-the-surface reasons (read: excuses) such as, but not limited to, my love for Vermont, the mostly-unheard-of comforts of a well-paying editorial job in Vermont, and my desire to accumulate valuable years of publishing/printing experience. In all honesty, like a man paralyzed by his metaphorical and/or literal cement feet in a zombie dream, I was too scared to move; afraid of the unknown world of lesser-paying jobs and the chance that this was as good as it could possibly get.

A few years ago, I read an interview of a co-writer for the TV show, The Simpsons. He talked about the sense of accomplishment he bathed in every day because of the commercial and creative success of the show. And he expressed aloud his bewilderment at the decisions of some of his former coworkers to leave the show for a better opportunity elsewhere. “Don’t they realize that it doesn’t get any better than this show?” he asked. Stupidly, when rationalizing my decision to stay at my job, I silently cited this writer when asking myself the blindly rhetorical question, “Don’t they realize this is a great Vermont job?” More coworkers than I can remember have come and gone since I began working in my department and only recently did I begin to think of their departures in a different light than that shown by the writer for The Simpsons. Only recently did I begin to consider that my position at this company, though a decent job for Vermont, was not worth the pain its mind-numbing work and soul-sucking executives inflicted upon me. This year, I began to come to terms with my fears and actively seek other employment. At this point in my search, I’m considering leaving the state, and/or applying to graduate schools. In the mean time, I’ve decided to stay at my current job.

Like the ghosts of this company’s past who were stuck with the company until their dreams of leaving it came to fruition, I have begun to question management (who, from now on shall be known as Darth Vader) with questions that ring in a lack-of-trust tone. Due to a great moment of idiocy on my part that can be blamed on my apathetic history with this company, Darth Vader’s overly defensive, bitter, pretentious, and passive-aggressive responses actually shocked me. But of course! While Vader’s answers were caked with professional-speak icing, the underlying tone screaming at me at the top of its lungs said, “Who the hell do you think you are and where the f#*k do you get off questioning anything I say?” Vader’s point that I shouldn’t dare question her authority, driven into my heart with a rusty spike, reminded Freckles of Madison and his belief that, if left unchecked, power bred corruptness. Showing my less-intelligent side, Vader’s response reminded me of high school.

While it could never be argued that Darth Vader ever resembled the popular Plastic Girls of high school (a phrase I coined in college, which was subsequently stolen by Tina Fey), her recent display of “I’m better than you” authority-flexing elitism did. This resemblance was so evident to me, in fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she convinced the Geek Squad (aka, the IT Department) that it was their privilege to do her work, or if she gave an employee a compliment, only to take it back two seconds later with a cruel, sarcastic rolling of the eyes. And while I could have a field day with comparisons between Vader and the people in high school I resented the most, my loyal (and starved) readers will not be surprised when I instead veer seemingly off subject for an unclear but good reason.

One of my coworkers showed up to work today with her face beaten into a pulp by, I’m suspecting, her “loving” husband of many years. I guessed spousal abuse because, according to what Veronica Japanica told me many years ago, this was not the first instance. While she smiles and stands proudly by her man who I’m guessing, in her abused mind, is the victim, I cannot help but notice the similarities between this coworker and Kara Beth Borden, the 14-year-old Pennsylvanian girl whose boyfriend murdered her parents. Both have been abused in some way, both are assuredly confused by the pain that has accompanied what they thought was love, and both continued to stand by those that hurt them out of fear and shame (though, in Borden’s case, it may have been involuntary).

These similarities, coupled with the resemblance between Darth Vader and the Plastic Girls, have got me wondering: aside from the obvious change in responsibilities, is there really that much of a difference between adolescence and adulthood? Or, as Freckles put it, is a 4-year-old’s life just as tough as an adult’s? Relatively speaking, in terms of emotions, is there any difference between how you felt when your fellow kindergartners kicked you out of their clique because your Dukes of Hazzard car wasn’t authentic, and the resentment employees feel as they do the Lay-Off March by the desks of those who survived the cuts? Maybe there is no difference save our abilities to express our emotions in ways other than crying in a corner; though, come to think of it, as an adult, I’ve done that, too. I submit that there is no real difference and maybe, in our rush to grow up, we overlooked that fact.