Category: Papa Benchly

"It ain’t over till it’s over."

Back in the mid-1980s, like most single-digit-old, elementary-school kids, I developed a strong case of America’s pastime. I’m pretty sure I joined Little League in 1985 simply because it was the thing to do, and when you consider my team’s 3-year record of 3-45, it’s remarkable to think that I’ve stuck with the game for so long. Not only did I stick with it, though, I also grew to love it, both on the field and off.

Around the same time that I learned how to play baseball, I began to take interest in watching it. I can still remember, with the kind of clarity that hardly ever accompanies a nearly 25-year-old memory, sitting in front of my grandparents’ television in 1984, watching the Oakland Athletics play, and seeing their speedy outfielder Rickey Henderson steal second base and then run to third when the throw sailed into center field. I ran as fast as Henderson into the kitchen where my parents and grandparents were discussing parental/grandparental things and proudly declared that Henderson was my new favorite ballplayer. In the winter months, when Henderson was traded to the New York Yankees, I declared that the Yankees were my new favorite team. But let’s be honest here: my heart ultimately would have led to the Yankees regardless of their roster. Like my father and his father before him, the Yankees were in my blood.

When my grandfather discovered my new love for his old team, it was like if the day you realized you loved candy coincided with the revelation that your home had a chocolate pond in its backyard. Suddenly, I was receiving hand-me-downs of the Yankees Magazine, I was going to an actual Yankees game with him and my father, and the sounds of a ballgame could be heard coming from the back room in his house nearly every time we visited. The games were on so often that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the letters “WPIX” had burned themselves into the screen. The Yankees were in my blood, yes, and my grandfather ensured that it would stay that way forever.

As some or all of you know, Papa Benchly and I made a bittersweet pilgrimage to Yankee Stadium this past Sunday, the last day of summer. It was sweet because this was the first Yankees game that he and I had been to together in approximately 20 years. It was bitter because the Yankees had all-but-mathematically been eliminated from playing in the postseason for the first time since my senior year in high school. It was sweet because the pre-game ceremony paraded out a long list of Yankees, including two of our heroes: Yogi Berra for me and Bobby Richardson for him. And it was bitter because the ceremony had been planned to honor the final baseball game to ever be played in the cathedral, which can now, three days later, be referred to as “the old Yankee Stadium.”

The flags atop the white frieze that helps to envelop the fans within the Stadium, sat motionless in the warm, summer’s night; if the ghosts of the building were going to have their way, we’d have to wait another day for the end of the seasons, both baseball and summer. Papa Benchly and I sat in the upper deck on the third base side (in about the same spot as where the entire Benchly family sat in 1987 when Papa Benchly and I were convinced by Mama Benchly that bringing the entire Benchly family to a Yankees game was a “good” idea [considering Sister #2 probably only remembers the music she listened to on her walkman, and Sister #1 probably only remembers Don Mattingly’s butt, and Mama Benchly probably only remembers the incredible heat that forced us to leave the game early {!}, I think it’s safe to say that this wasn’t a “good” idea]). In the final game at Yankee Stadium, Papa Benchly and I sat in seats that originally cost 3 times as much as they did that fateful Benchly family day in 1987, and for which in 2008 we paid the scalper 10 times the face value: a price worth paying.

On the long and sunny drive down to the Stadium, Papa Benchly and I reminisced about past Stadium trips and how every trip culminated in a Yankees loss. We saw an Old Timer’s Day game, an Opening Day game, a doubleheader, an extra-inning game, and the game in which Don Mattingly extended his home-run streak, among, we’re pretty sure, many other games. And the Yankees lost every single one of them. It’s safe to say that this affected me. When the Yankees finally made it to the World Series in my freshman year of college, I turned down the opportunity to buy tickets simply because I didn’t want my presence to hurt their chances of winning. And when this losing streak was finally broken at an early-2001-season game against the Boston Red Sox, it required not one but two 9th-inning home runs to save the day. And, of course, that particular season marked the end of the team’s run of World Series titles so it could be argued that my presence at a regular season game changed the course of the postseason’s history. Needless to say, this was a curse my father and I hoped would be broken that night, but we understood: when it comes to baseball, the unexpected is expected.

For a long time, and including a previous post in this blog, I’ve been a fan of former baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti’s quote about baseball. He says we “count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive,” and that just when we need it most, “when the days are all twilight, it stops.” What I had never noticed until recently, however, was the rest of the essay from which this quote was taken, entitled “The Green Fields of the Mind.” In it, Giamatti expounds on his opening theory and how it relates to the illusion of eternity: “It breaks my heart because it was meant to foster in me the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern, and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop and betray precisely what it promised. There are those who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.”

Anyone who has ever spent 11 hours in a car in one 24-hour span knows that the open road allows for the opportunity to get lost in your thoughts. And so it was that in between conversations with Papa Benchly, I found myself thinking about how my life had changed so much in 31 years while a building on a 5-sided plot of land had resisted corrosion and remained almost entirely the same. I couldn’t help but notice the differences: instead of being driven to the game, having my way paid for me, and discussing school and baseball, I drove us in my car, paid for my half, and found pleasure in our conversations about our family’s history, and baseball, and the upcoming election, and the economy, and the current Benchly family drama. 20 years later, while our relationship with one another had not changed, our relationships to the rest of the world had: I was now an adult, he was now a grandfather. And there we were driving to and from a landmark that, for my 31 years, had always been ready to serve as a backdrop to my life, and which, a few short hours later (after a long-overdue win), would no longer be available, and I realized that Giamatti was right: nothing lasts forever. Stadiums. Baseball. Youth. Life. And the only comfort I can find is that of a green field in the fading sun.

Benchly’s Guide to Renting in Burlington

After graduating from college, I decided to do the conforming nonconformist postgraduate thing of cramming my belongings into my car (a Plymouth Colt the size of Plymouth Rock [a rock that’s far less impressive in person than in name]) and promptly heading out of town on the open road to a destination paved in gold where I was sure I’d find a job and, subsequently, myself. I said my goodbyes to my family including Mama Benchly who, because she’s Mama Benchly, morbidly assumed this would be the last time she’d ever see me.

On my trip, I drove through my college stomping grounds, which, because I had graduated two weeks earlier, could now be referred to as my old college stomping grounds. After a quick overnight stop to see my college buddy Hugh, I resumed my trip, serenaded by a seemingly unending supply of cassette tapes, each of which was forever branded with my postgraduate taste in music (read: Dave Matthews and Counting Crows). 12 hours later, I reached my destination: a 2-3ish-bedroom, Wilmington, NC apartment occupied by my friend Scoot and her friend Susan. And then three weeks later, without a job or experiencing anything close to a moment of self discovery, and with ~$30 to my name, I packed up my belongings and begrudgingly headed home. (A side note: if you can believe it, if my car hadn’t died in New Jersey, that $30 would have come close to paying for my entire trip home to Vermont. Oh to be 22 and paying less than $1 per gallon of gas again!)

After a 3-month stint as the Benchly Family Bum, I found a mind-numbing, yet well-paying job at the Evil Empire. A year later, after saving up a small fortune, I bought Inga Beep the Jeep (at $.89/gallon, you would have too), crammed my belongings into my new car, and headed out of town on the open road to my new home: a 2-3ish-bedroom, Burlington, VT apartment occupied by my coworker and soon-to-friend Veronica Japonica. And that’s where I lived for the next seven years. When Veronica Japonica moved to California the following year, I had the pleasure and pain of having to find a replacement roommate, which went something like this:

1. Place creatively-crafted classified ad in the local weekly (read: liberal) newspaper, and do your best not to feel like you’re selling yourself in the personals.

2. Screen 50-75 calls in the next week from interested potential roommates who:

– “can’t believe how cheap your downtown Burlington apartment is”;
– “is a totally laid back and mellow roommate who gets along with anyone, and I’ve called you three times so how come you haven’t called me back?”;
– “is, like, the ideal roommate”;
– “is a quiet, peaceful roommate who should probably mention I’m a recovering alcoholic, and the anger management classes seem to be working”;
– “is looking for a nice apartment for my daughter who is really nice…and…she’s really cute too.”

3. Interview the elite few who survived the screening process and do your best not to laugh when one of them says she loves to sing at home and then volunteers a completely tone-deaf rendition of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

4. Choose the person you’re going to be living with for the next year, give or take a month-to-month. In this case, I selected Dexy’s Midnight Runner, a UVM graduate student who reminded me of an old friend. One year later, when Dexy moved out, Veronica Japonica moved back in, and one year after that, when Veronica moved out again and in with her boyfriend/now husband Rick Springfield, I repeated the process and selected The Virgin Mary, who, in her phone interview, said, “I’m pretty much a loner who will be out of your hair most of the time, or in your hair if you want, too.” After The Virgin Mary moved out and in with her boyfriend/now husband Joseph (notice a trend?), I repeated the process twice more to first select Closed Bedroom Door Roommate (CBDR) and then ultimately Julia Stiles.

This is the long-winded (read: Benchly) way of saying that I’ve had quite a bit of experience in the roommate search department, and less experience in the apartment search, which explains how unprepared I was when I began my latest apartment search last month. Suddenly, I was the one whose phone calls were being screened, who couldn’t believe how expensive downtown Burlington apartments were, who was a quiet and peaceful roommate, and whose anger management classes seemed to be doing the trick. And remarkably, considering Othello and Burlington’s blatant discrimination of tenants with cats, suddenly I was one of the elite few who survived the screening process and who was doing his best to sound completely “normal” and like the ideal roommate.

My first interview, for a 2-3ish-bedroom apartment close to the border of Burlington and its southern counterpart, was with Speed Guy, so named for his apparent choice of recreational drugs. He was super nice, but talked like he was being paid per character, and ran up and down the stairs like he was a toddler late for Saturday morning cartoons. There was also a photocopier in the living room; an odd decorative choice a roommate might someday regret should a weekend party get out of hand. During the interview, another potential roommate arrived and I found myself conducting the interview for her in the hopes that Speed Guy would pick her over me; that’s how little I liked the place.

My second interview, for a studio a few houses down from The Virgin Mary and Joseph, went well until I entered the studio. I’m serious. I was charming. I sounded responsible and like the ideal roommate. And the studio was mine for the taking, and I would have taken it too except that it was essentially a kitchen hallway with closet space. Maybe I’m naive, or at the very least, way too influenced by Hollywood, but I’ve always envisioned a studio apartment as a large square room with hardwood floors, high ceilings, large windows, a loft bed, and enough room to distinguish between bedroom/dining room/kitchen. The one that I checked out was essentially a basement with carpeting and the kind of kitchen you’d find in a college’s temporary housing built to accommodate hundreds of students displaced by renovations.

My third interview was for a promising 2-no-wait-3-bedroom apartment in the south end on the hill. The ad was misleading; I entered the apartment expecting a 2-bedroom living arrangement and was surprised to find 3 bedrooms and 2 roommates. Strike one. Strike two was the huge dogs who growled, barked, and showed their teeth at me the entire time I was there; the same dogs their owner, Clancy Brown assured me would be friendly toward Othello (I imagine Othello will end up rooming with another dog at some point in his life [he roomed with one when he lived with Montana Girl] but I think I’d rather he live with a dog his own size). Strike three was the kitchen with dishes piled in the sink up to and above the faucet. Strike four was when Clancy pointed out an extra room and said, though we would be paying equal rent, that this extra room was his and could be used only if I was quiet and didn’t disturb his stuff. Strike five was Clancy pointing out that on a street with minimal parking, if the apartment received a parking pass, it would be his to use. Strike six was Clancy saying he’d get upset if his roommates made noise after 10 p.m., but that he tends to make a lot of kitchen noise at 5 a.m. Strike seven was that Clancy and only Clancy would be on the lease. He offered me the place. I declined.

After Clancy, I was discouraged to say the least. I replied to quite a few Craigslist ads and received only a handful of responses, most of which thanked me for my time but regretted to inform me that the apartment had been filled…in the 15 minutes since the ad had been placed. This is when I gave up hope. And that’s precisely when a woman responded to my email and asked me to check out her apartment later that day. I recognized the woman’s name and quickly realized that we shared a mutual friend: Sarah the L. Score. Mama and Papa Benchly were especially generous in letting me stay with them for a month, but as a 31 year old, I needed my own space or else I’d risk having my sanity go the way of the dodo bird. And that’s why I wasn’t above exploiting this connection.

When I looked at the place, a residential gold mine by Burlington’s standards (front and back porch, huge yard, off-street parking, a large bathroom, rooms with character), I discovered that this woman wasn’t looking for a roommate, but rather a tenant to share her downstairs apartment with another woman who had already been chosen to live there. Essentially, she was playing roommate matchmaker for the apartment she owned. And when her first choice backed out, I was offered the place. I gladly accepted and last week found myself yet again cramming my belongings into cars.

I can’t say that this process has taught me much in the way of how to find an apartment in Burlington. If anything, it taught me how screwed up this town’s housing situation is, and how lucky a person has to be to find a safe, clean, decent, affordable home. For every landlady like mine, there are 15 who end their ads with “sorry, no pets.” And for every safe, clean, decent, affordable home like mine, there are 20 broken-down, dirty, overpriced holes in the ground owned by deadbeat landlords (you know who you are, JL). And no matter how hard you try, sometimes you end up finding a great home for a reason you never even considered.

After moving in, I learned that my new landlady had specifically chosen me because of my described personality traits but also because of Othello. As the proud mother of her own cat, she knew how difficult it was for kitty owners to find decent housing. Consequently, as Othello settles nicely into our new home, I’ve made sure to smother him with hugs and kisses for helping us get here. Not one for PDA, he then pushes me away, licks his paw, walks to the window sill, sits down, and keeps an eye on his new neighbors.

Where am I going?

During a recent emotional Benchly family moment in the Benchly family kitchen, Papa Benchly gave me some advice that he had heard from a famous philosopher, which I’ll try to paraphrase here: “there are two questions people ask in their lives: 1) Where am I going? and 2) who’s going with me? And most people try to answer these questions in the wrong order.”

The philosopher’s point is that many people forget to identify themselves because they’re too busy searching for love. And when they find that love but have no idea who they are, they’re essentially not ready for the love. They’re not ready because the changes they experience when they ultimately find themselves invariably take them in a different direction than their loved one. And so they grow apart from their loved one in spite of their love.

One could argue that it’s for this very same reason that most high-school relationships don’t make it off the life-long-commitment ground. I, for one, can only think of two high-school-sweetheart couples lucky enough to have evolved in the same direction. I’m sure you’d be hard pressed to come up with three.

The lesson learned here is so simple it could be a bumper sticker: find yourself before your love. And yet, I’m sure you’ll all agree, it’s not that simple at all. I’d go so far as to say that for the first ~10 years of my dating life, it was borderline impossible.

The last few weeks have allowed me the opportunity to consider what Papa Benchly said and how I could apply it to my life. I’ve lived enough life at this point to understand that we’re all constantly evolving and that what I consider the norm today could be outdated, closed-minded, and/or illogical twenty years from now. In other words, where I’m going could change. It’s for this reason that I think the philosopher’s point would have been better expressed with different questions: Who am I? And who loves me?

As much as the world around us evolves, and as much as we constantly redefine what we want out of life, what makes up who we are (our core) never drastically changes. (Even when we experience a traumatic life event, our core doesn’t change; it may be clouded/well-hidden by the event, but it’s still there.) So once we figure out who we are, I think it’s possible to completely understand who we’re capable of loving.

With this in mind, and contrary to what some may think, I feel fairly confident in my understanding of who I am and, to a less-important extent, where I’m going. In fact, I’m so confident in who I am and where I’m going at this point in my life, that I’m not afraid to stop and sit down around town from time to time to absorb the life I’m living on my journey, for even when I’m sitting, I feel as though I can still see my destination on the horizon.

The only question that remains now, and one that I’ve begun to seriously reconsider is, who am I capable of loving? There’s no guarantee in this life that I’ll ever find an answer to that question and yet, I still have hope. That’s just who I am.

The Road Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:

With only a handful of minutes left before yet another July day abruptly leaves me behind, I’ve settled in The Blogging Chair and Othello has taken up residence on top of the purple coffee table-turned-footstool, his tail tapping against my outstretched legs as if to keep tabs on me.

Earlier this evening, Freckles and I returned from an all-too-short, 4-day family vacation in Bethany Beach, Delaware. And although he got quite a bit of love from Sarah the L in our absence, Othello is most definitely playing the part of Emotionally-Hurt Kitty. This is not to be confused with Heartbreakingly-Sad Kitty and Pathetically-Miserable Kitty. (Montana Girl wasn’t kidding when I adopted him a few years ago: Othello requires more emotional attention than the next cat! Considering how emotionally sensitive I am, she also got it right when she called him my kitty soul mate.)

Freckles and I left Delaware a little after 10 a.m. and I expected us to arrive in Burlington shortly after 9 p.m. I expected an 11-hour trip because that’s how long it took us to do the reverse trip 5 days earlier. However, despite a 20-minute detour in Millsboro, DE to find Grandma and Grandpa Benchly in the local cemetery, as well as 1-hour detour in Dover, DE (home of Dover Man, the invincible capital of Delaware!) to pick up an E-Z Pass for me, water for Freckles, and “cheap” gas (read: $3.89/gallon) for the car, we ended up arriving in Burlington 1 hour earlier than expected. If you ask me, the difference was the timing of the trip; in other words, we hit the streets of NYC before rush hour did. If you ask Freckles, the difference was the route.

Any Vermonter will tell you that there’s no easy way to get there from here. We have two interstate highways: one travels from the northwest to central eastern Vermont, the other travels north to south but on the eastern border. And thus, anyone wishing to travel down the west coast of Vermont from Burlington has two options: 1) brave the local (read: the pharmacy-destined elderly) traffic on Route 7 and ultimately cross over to New York’s “Northway,” which I think is so named because Canada is north of the self-centered New York City, not the other way around; or 2) go 40 miles out of the way on our two interstates while hoping that the traffic-less route will save in time what it costs in gas. On the way home, we went the “Northway” route because Freckles didn’t want to repeat our spontaneous adventures on our southbound trip. And although I was happy to oblige because I wanted to be home as quickly as possible, it wasn’t because I regretted our ultimate southbound route; in fact, I’d probably do it again:

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

It was 2 p.m. on Saturday, and we had been in the car since a little after 8 that morning. We were stuck in traffic on I95 South, about 5 or 6 miles east of the George Washington Bridge (aka, the gateway to hell [aka, New Jersey]), and had been at a practical standstill for 10 minutes. Our planned route looked like this:

But traffic was going nowhere and it was going nowhere fast. While I cursed myself for daring to test the George Washington Bridge waters when we could have easily skirted around the city the “Northway,” I silently prepared an imaginary alternate route in my head. With our road map placed conveniently in the trunk, I convinced Freckles to let me try a detour on a bridge that sounded vaguely familiar (the Whitestone) and which, the signs said, would take us south. 5 minutes later, while pulling an oh-my-god-we’re-lost-in-Queens-again U-turn, I cursed myself for taking said Whitestone Bridge while silently preparing an imaginary way out of Queens. 45 minutes later when, without map, we arrived in New Jersey via the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island (while also enjoying a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline), I applauded my navigational skills while Freckles silently prepared to throw herself out the window. She claims we lost time, while I strongly believe my “Staten Island Detour Express” route saved us time:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Now, I learned my lesson and will most likely never be able to go the out of the way route with Freckles again, and maybe going on the Whitestone Bridge wasn’t the smartest idea (when told about our I-95 South to “Staten Island Detour Express” route upon our arrival in Delaware, Papa Benchly’s response was “why did you go that way?!?”), but I’m still a firm believer in the underlying philosophy expressed in this quote (one of my favorites):

Although a beach-bound Freckles will most likely disagree (as would a Yankee Stadium-bound Benchly), I think the trip should be just as important as the destination.

The Infamous Benchly Waterslide Incident of 1984

At work, I was recently asked why I had a fear of pools/water and so I described in vivid detail, the events that transpired over 20 years ago that, to this day, still greatly affect me. During this global-warming-reminder of a summer, when water is our source of sweet relief, I think that maybe we could all benefit from this lesson-learned in water safety. And so, without further ado, I present my dramatic retelling of the Infamous Benchly Waterslide Incident of 1984:

Oh! the Infamous Benchly Waterslide Incident of 1984, a dark stain on our family’s history. It was a hot summer day not unlike today, and my family ventured to the water park in Lake George, NY. With trepidation, I climbed the stairs with Papa Benchly to the top of the highest* waterslide in the park. The waterslide waters were fast** that day, my friends! But with encouragement from my father, I placed my 7-year-old body on the slide and pushed off into the dark, abysmally unknown water world. Five seconds later, as I slid faster and faster down this wet labyrinth, unbeknownst to me, in an effort to expedite the wait in line, the park attendee was forcing Papa Benchly to push off into the same slide despite his loud, vocal protest in which he cited various kinetic formulas. As I quickly neared the end of this ride, I slowly gained confidence in my ability to master the slippery world of water, but this ride was not to have a happy ending; indeed, it nearly had a tragic one. For as I reached the bottom, and with Mama Benchly standing in the pool with her loving arms outstretched, ready to catch me, Papa Benchly proved his various kinetic theorems by crashing into me and pushing me to the bottom of the pool. Emotionally crushed by my father’s apparent attempt to murder me, I lost sight of any reason to live and decided to stay below the surface. If it wasn’t for Mama Benchly, who snatched me out of the waters and carried me to shore, I might not be here today.

*Exaggeration.
**Unconfirmed. The waterslide park in question refused to comment on said accusations.

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.

Big News

I learned something today. That’s not the big news. The big news comes later. I know you can hardly wait but you’ll have to deal because I want to share with you what I learned. And this is what I learned: I learned the difference between first, second, third, etc. cousins, as well as when to apply the term “removed.” You’re jealous; you’re thinking, “I want to know the difference!” But don’t be jealous. I’m going to share my knowledge with you right now.

The first, second, third, etc title for your cousins is directly related to your grandparents. Cousins who share two grandparents are considered first cousins. Cousins who have different grandparents, but who share great-grandparents are second cousins. Therefore, your children are second cousins to the children of your first cousins because they all share the same great-grandparents.

When the word “removed” is applied, it indicates that the two people described are from different generations. You and your aforementioned first cousins are from the same generation so there’s no removal; but you are from a different generation than your first cousin’s children. Therefore, they are your first cousins, once removed. If the children of your first cousins, once removed have children, those children are your first cousins, twice removed. And so on, and so forth. Make sense? Good. Now, onto the big news…

As all of you know, New Year’s Eve is quickly approaching, carrying with it the brand new year 2006. To celebrate the event, I’ll be traveling south to Freckles’ aunt and uncle’s house in Pennsylvania. These are the same all-too-generous extended family members who shared their lake home with me this past summer. Freckles and I found out last night that their latest gift is to bring us and the rest of the family to New York City tomorrow evening for the 8 o’clock show of Spamalot on Broadway. So before we ring in the new year, we’ll have an opportunity to witness one of the best entertainment accomplishments of the current year. As Mama and Papa Benchly, as well as Sarah the L and Head will tell you, this is a truly awesome gift! But that’s not the big news either.

When I told my father about these tickets, the following conversation ensued (with some poetic license on my part, including an inside joke that, I’m guessing, only Ms. Parker will get):

Papa Benchly: You should have your mother email Lauren to see if she can get you backstage!
Mr. Benchly: Lauren?
Papa Benchly: Lauren Kennedy.
Mr. Benchly: (blank stare)
Papa Benchly: Your COUSIN, Lauren Kennedy.
Mr. Benchly: (blank stare)
Papa Benchly: You know, your mother’s mother’s brother’s son’s daughter.
Mr. Benchly: (blank stare)
Papa Benchly: Mr. Benchly, are you listening to me?
Mr. Benchly: Shove it.
Papa Benchly: Did you just say “shove it”?

Anyway, evidently, the daughter of Grandma Benchly’s nephew; aka, the daughter of Mama Benchly’s first cousin; aka, the granddaughter of Grandma Benchly’s brother; aka, Mama Benchly’s first cousin, once removed; aka, Mr. Benchly’s great-uncle’s granddaughter; aka, my second cousin; is currently starring as the Lady of the Lake in the Broadway hit show Spamalot!

And my mother emailed her, and she responded to say that if I let her know when I’ll be attending, she’d love to stick around after the show to meet me. Of course, Benchly family historians will remind us that we have, in fact, met once before: at an extended family reunion gathering in the Carolinas back in the early 80s, when I was ~7 and she was ~10. If it wasn’t so tacky, I’d bring a picture from that reunion to have her autograph. I’m so excited and oddly proud of a woman I’ve met only once in my life. Hopefully, tomorrow, she doesn’t sing like I do!

Now that I’ve revealed the big news (and yes, in fact, that was the big news), I hope that all of my loyal and, consequently, bored-out-their-mind readers have a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve and I hope that, for all of you, the new year brings with it health, love, happiness, and an ultra-talented, famous second cousin (or third cousin, or fourth cousin, or 3rd cousin twice removed…)! I’ll see you in the new year…

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.

Just call me Deane

Today began like any other: I awoke to the gradually louder and increasingly annoying beeps of my alarm clock, I turned the alarm off, and I went back to sleep. A few minutes later, when I determined that to stay in bed one more minute meant to miss the Loser Cruiser to work, I got out of bed, made my bed (because I’m anal), took a shower, dressed without much thought of the weather, ran out the door as Othello looked on with his puppy-dog-kitty eyes from his spot on the table near the window, and walked up Church Street to the bus station.

When I arrived at the Loser Cruiser hub, I was alarmed to find no Loser Cruiser waiting for me. In the winter, on those typical Vermont snow days, this was expected; but in the warmer months, the bus routine is as predictable as the menstrual cycles of college roommates. I sat down on one of the benches, took out my David Sedaris book, and waited for news of my morning commute’s fate. After another bus’s driver notified Make Out Woman that our bus was broken down and would be delayed at least 30 minutes, and as Make Out Woman and Biography Man walked away (to, I’m guessing, their respective vehicles), I sat next to Hunger Mountain Girl and considered my options. I called Mama Benchly who graciously let me borrow her car and I began walking in that direction, when I suddenly became overwhelmed with a feeling I can only describe as a distant cousin of survivor’s guilt. I turned around, approached Hunger Mountain Girl, and offered her a ride to work. When she accepted, we headed to Mama and Papa Benchly’s home to get the car.

(When we were met at the front door by Brother-in-Law #1, who had just dropped off Niece #2, I was treated to a stinging moment of awkwardness when it became clear to me that he had mistaken Hunger Mountain Girl for Hypothetical. That one’s going to leave a mark, especially for him when my sister finds out and punches him.)

Those who know me best, know that I don’t do well when dealing with strangers. And though Hunger Mountain Girl and I had ridden the bus together for almost a year, my invitation to her this morning were the first words I had ever spoken to her, and the thought of spending the next hour in a car together was an uneasy one. My fears were put to rest soon enough though as we settled into our car and a nice conversation about San Francisco and obnoxiously rich people. On our way out of town, we passed another one of the Loser Cruiser’s stops and when we noticed two fellow passengers waiting impatiently in the rain, we pulled over and offered them a ride. And so, the morning commute to work became the car-pool tale of Mr. Benchly, Hunger Mountain Girl, the Cruiser Snoozer, and Audi Girl.

Most of our conversations stayed far away from anything controversial with the exception of the uncomfortable silence that greeted Hunger Mountain Girl’s observation that most convenience store owners are “foreigners.” The Cruiser Snoozer talked about his children, Audi Girl talked about a town meeting she went to the night before, Hunger Mountain Girl talked about her upcoming two month trip to the West Coast, and I talked about my job and my need for a new one. Hunger Mountain Girl told me that Stonecutter Way Girl’s name was Claire and she was from France (do you hear that, Sarah? She’s FRENCH!!!!) and that while I was sitting in front of her one day, she drew a picture of me. The highlight of the trip, by far, was when we all came together in a union of nostalgia to swap stories about Al Bundy. Oh how we all miss Al Bundy!

As we exited the interstate at the Montpelier exit, Hunger Mountain Girl asked me where I was going to drop everyone off. I said, “might as well do the route.” I then shouted out in my best Deane voice, “anyone for National Life up on the hill?” When no one answered and while everyone silently thought of National Life Guy, I made my way to State Street. I pulled up to the Chittenden Bank and called out “David? David?,” thus mocking Deane’s daily attempt to wake up the Cruiser Snoozer. Finally, I drove down Stonecutter’s Way and pulled over to let out Audi Girl and Hunger Mountain Girl. As they left the car, giving wishes for a good day and gratitude for the ride, I responded the only way I know how: “I’ll see you on the bus.”

"She fades just out of sight so there isn’t any sweetness in the dreaming…"

When I was 14, I went on a weekend church retreat with Sister #2 and Papa Benchly to a tiny white church in a small town in southern Vermont. Before we left home, Mama Benchly had received word from her brothers that their father, my grandfather, was most likely on his deathbed. For a few hours, we tossed around the idea of staying home but then decided to leave with the understanding that if anything happened, we would come home right away.

Around 9 p.m. that first night of the retreat, while I was seated at a table joined with others to form a half-circle, the church office phone rang. One sound I can assuredly say is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, is the sound of a phone ringing in a hollow church on a quiet, small-town Friday evening. It’s so loud, you almost expect it to be God. The person who answered the phone said it was for Papa Benchly and in that split second, I knew who was on the other end of the phone and why. And to this day, I can still vividly recall Papa Benchly’s calm, yet pained expression as he passed by me and my sister on his way to answer the phone; and Sister #2’s fearful and sad expression, too; and I can still feel in my stomach the feeling of anxious dread I felt that night. It’s a feeling that accompanies any inevitable news of death, and it’s a feeling I felt when I woke this morning.

I first met Hypothetical on a Saturday morning in February when Montana Girl and I ventured into a Main Street consignment shop called Pam’s Place. The three of us were the only customers in the store that hour. Montana Girl took me there to search for her Mardi Gras parade costume; I went on the off chance I would find a cool outfit for an upcoming date with Peeps.

After a few short minutes of browsing through a depressingly small men’s section, my “Cute Girl Radar” sent urgent signals to my attention and moved me into a position where I could see Hypothetical. As Sarah the L and I like to say, she was “wife cute” (aka, on a strictly superficial level, someone I’d feel comfortable waking up next to for the rest of my life). She was wearing jeans and a grey, knee-length, pea-coat-like winter jacket, and her hair and make-up suggested she was in control of her life. She overheard my conversation with Montana Girl and took the opportunity to point out leather pants that might work with the parade outfit. While she paid for her clothes and as she left the store, I made a point of remembering her name; I can’t explain why except to say I felt like I’d be using it again someday. And I did.

In early March, the determined folks in the world of fate pushed Hypothetical into my life again and this time, I didn’t let her go. What followed were intense dreams and promises and kisses and smiles and text messages and hopes and hugs and cuddling and passion all rolled up into one big unhealthy fast start. And slowly, but surely, as is often the case when you mix ingredients out of order or too quickly, the flimsy foundation we had built began to crumble as we silently realized that our true personalities, though both drenched in heartfelt sincerity, were not a perfect match for one another. The death of us was inevitable and for the best, and yet I couldn’t help but fear it.

This morning, Hypothetical made official what we had unofficially felt in our hearts for awhile. And as I sit here pondering all the wonderful memories I’ll have of Hypothetical and succumbing to the tears that accompany the painful memories I won’t be able to ignore, I’m reminded of a conversation CP, Sarah the L, and I had about the superpowers we would each choose to possess if given the chance. Sarah said she would be Super Leap-Tall-Buildings-In-A-Single-Bound Lesbo-Loving Telepathic Chick, thus giving her the power to read the minds of lesbian, Empire State Building sightseers. CP said she wanted to be Super Flying Leper-Healing Invisible Woman, allowing her the opportunity to heal people and to be invisible and fly away if “the lepers got out of control.” I said I wanted to be Do-Over Man, not to be confused with Dover Man, the invincible capital of Delaware! I would have the ability to go back in time to correct my mistakes.

And so, as I file this Hypothetical chapter away, I can’t help but wonder one last hypothetical question. What if I never saw Hypothetical after Pam’s Place? What if I could go back in time to make it so our story ended the way it began?: Hypothetical left Pam’s Place. Montana Girl purchased the leather pants, I resisted the temptation to buy a cheap wine rack I didn’t need, and we left the store, heading up Main Street. On our walk to the Church Street Marketplace, Montana Girl turned to me and said, “where to next?”

Anyone who knows anything about me understands that very few words come out of my mouth without careful consideration for how they convey some sort of ironic or genuinely meaningful symbolism. Sometimes it’s blunt, like my “Hypothetically…” posting last month, and sometimes it’s subtle, like the last paragraph in each section of my “Song of My Anecdotal Self, Volume II” posting last week. So it will come as a shock to most all of you when I end this posting in a tone lacking any subtle symbolism:

Hypothetical’s departure from my life hurts like hell. I want the pain to go away and I don’t think it will for awhile. But, if given the chance to go back in time to take away this pain, if I could be Do-Over Man for one day, I wouldn’t trade away one star-crossed minute with her for anything. She made me smile more than most. And I’m thankful for her.