IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

Boston traffic is enough to make the sanest individual in the world go stark raving mad. One moment you have a road with four open lanes and the next moment, the Central Artery is backed up and roads in every direction come to a complete stop for miles. Rush hour traffic in Boston is the worst so I knew I was faced with a monumental predicament when I had to attend an early morning meeting in Boston; drive or take public transportation?

I decided to take the T because traffic would be backed up for hours in the morning and by the time I made it to my appointment; the meeting would be halfway over. I also decided to be obsessively early because I figured the extra time would allow me to grab a cup of coffee and a bagel once I got into Boston. Early engagements require a lot of caffeine and as an added bonus, if I arrived before everyone else, I would be able to get a nice comfortable seat at the table.

I didn’t want to sit in two hours of bumper to bumper traffic so I chose to ride the T. The biggest problem about using public transportation was when I got on the train; everyone was crammed into the car like sardines in a tin can. As I jostled and elbowed my way into a standing position in the compartment, the train pulled out of the station.

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I must admit, I can’t stand snow. It has to be shoveled and after the snow plow pushes the snow back into my driveway, it has to be shoveled again. But my wife and I have chosen to live in the Greater Boston area so snow comes with the territory and we have always done our best to deal with it. I don’t like it, but I deal with it.

Last Friday, it snowed. I knew the storm was coming and although I was ready for it, I waited until Saturday morning to shovel my driveway. As I was shoveling the driveway, Joshua and Chloe came out to play in our front yard. They started with a simple snow man and then they moved onto snow angels. They were having a blast just rolling around in the snow as I was getting grumpier at the work I still had left to do. While I watched the two of them playing in our snowy sanctuary, my mind drifted back to a white covered morning two years ago…

I had just come in from shoveling the driveway and I was getting ready for work. I asked Stephanie if she wanted me to take Joshua to pre-school. I knew it would add extra time to my commute but it made more sense for me to drive him then for Stephanie to bundle up our eight month old daughter, Chloe, trudge out into the snow, get both children into the car, fight traffic to get Joshua to pre-school on time, get both kids out of the car, take Joshua into his classroom, put Chloe back into the car, fight the weather and traffic to get home safely, and then after three hours, turn around and do it all over again, just to pick him up. It may not sound like a lot on a regular day but when you add in the element of foul weather, it just made sense for me to take Joshua to pre-school and limit the number of car trips Stephanie would have to take with the baby to just one.

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I came into work last Monday morning and found out that I had a full slate of appointments scheduled. Everyone in my office had taken the day off except for my administrative assistant who had planned on coming into the office around noon. So for fun, my staff loaded up my schedule like the main runway at Logan airport. One appointment right after the other and at times, one over the other while another tries to slide in underneath. I was the only one in the office and by the looks of my schedule; it appeared the morning was going to be a challenge, but I was up to the task at hand.

It was hectic. Every time I peered out of my office door, it seemed like there were five more people waiting to meet with me. It was beginning to feel like a daunting task, but I was determined to show my staff that I could rise to the challenge. I had decided early on in the day that I was going to meet every appointment they had scheduled for me; on time and without delay. My goal was to clear my schedule, as well as my reception area, by the time my administrative assistant came into the office. It was because of this little internal game of cat and mouse that I was playing with my staff that the inevitable was about to happen.

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“Knock, Knock,” Josh said as we sat down for dinner.

“Who’s there?” I replied.

“Boo.”

“Boo who?”

“Don’t cry, have a tissue,” he said as he started laughing hysterically which only prompted his sister, Chloe, to get into the act.

“Knock, knock,” Chloe said.

“Who’s there?”

“Don’t cry, eat a tissue,” Chloe replied straight faced as I laughed at her ability to mess up a joke she had literally heard just five seconds earlier.

This is life in the suburbs. Joshua tries to be funny at the dinner table while his sister is actually funny because in her attempts to imitate Joshua, she makes a humorous gaffe that makes the effort worthwhile. They will continue like this until one of them laughs so hard that food comes flying across the table or milk comes gushing out of one of their noses.

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During the early part of the 1990s, I was the lead singer of a rock ‘n roll cover band. Originally, when we started the band, we were unable to think of a name for the group so, Jack, our guitar player who was a medical engineer, suggested we call ourselves the Slide Rule Jockeys for our initial gig. At the time, everyone figured, “Why not? If anything else, at least it was an original name.”

The name Slide Rule Jockeys didn’t last long because we soon realized that there was a big difference between the word “original” which actually means “cool” and the other meaning of the word; “geeks.” At our next rehearsal, we all sat down and bounced names off the wall to see what would stick and by the end of the night; we had decided to name our group Free Beer.

Free Beer wasn’t a band name that lasted very long as well because we couldn’t get hired by any of the local establishments. Local bars refused to hire us because they wouldn’t promote our name, FREE BEER, in newspaper ads because they felt that people would show up, pay a cover charge, and expect to get “free beer” for the rest of the night. Club owners felt that customers would get angry because they were being duped by questionable advertising tactics. They liked our sound but not our name and they weren’t going to take a chance on us until we changed it.

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As I was getting ready for work this morning, I remembered that I had not checked my lottery numbers from the previous Friday night. I have always taken the idea of winning the lottery with a grain of salt but like many people I know, I have always been willing to wager my dollar on the chance at attaining my dreams. I know exactly what I would do if I ever won the lottery and I know exactly who I would share all of my winnings with because if I were ever to win a few million dollars, there would be no way I could keep it all for myself.

I started to go through the lottery ritual that my son Joshua and I have developed over the years before I actually check my numbers in the newspaper. I sat down at the table and stared bewilderedly at my son Joshua who was stabbing his waffle with his fork. Once he had the waffle securely on the end of his fork, he rotated his hand one hundred and eighty degrees so that the waffle was above his hand not below. Joshua took a bite of the waffle and then started spinning his fork around so it looked like a helicopter propeller. Every once in a while he would take a bite of his waffle but the rest of the time he just spun his waffle above the plate.

I must admit that I love it when he finds weird ways to eat his food and this morning I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to entice him into putting some syrup on his waffle so that it would add a new and messier dimension to our breakfast, but I didn’t because I was sure that the mess that would have been created would have angered my wife immensely. I have to admit, though, I was silently hoping he would come up with the idea all by himself nonetheless.

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I was in a meeting; a round table of many of the diverse agencies I work with throughout the community when my cell phone rang. I was going to ignore the call because everyone knew that I was in a meeting where I couldn’t be disturbed unless it was important. I pulled the phone from my pocket and looked down to see who was calling. It was my wife. I almost decided to silence the ringer and put the phone back in my coat but for some reason, I didn’t.

“Hello,” I whispered as I answered the phone while walking out of the room.

“I was in an accident,” Stephanie said in a shaky voice. “We’re okay but I don’t know if I can drive my car.”

“What?” I said in shock as her words echoed throughout my head.

“We were in an accident,” she repeated shakily.

“Are you okay?”

“We’re fine. I’m, I’m just shaken up a little bit.”

“And Chloe?”

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I am a life long New York Giants fan! As my schedule proved, I had very little time for writing this past weekend as I soaked in the aura of the Super Bowl and prepared for our annual party in honor of the big game.

As I woke up yesterday, I had time to reflect upon the Super Bowl that had been played on Sunday. I still don’t think my feet have touched the ground yet. The New York Giants achieved the impossible and did it in incredible fashion. But as I sat on my couch, recuperating from our own football game that we played earlier in the day, I had an inspirational thought; “Why am I taking a paid vacation day when today should be a Holiday?”

In the past couple of years, the buzz word that has dominated the headlines of our newspapers and television newscasts has been the word “change.” “Change direction”, Change the course”, “Change the leadership”, “Change the economic outlook”, “Change the tone/tenor”, “Change the course of history”, and so on and so on. “Change” is the buzz word for 2008 and in honor of this buzz word, I have a new motto for this election year; “Change that Holiday!”

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Last night I sat down to write out the injury report for our annual Snow Bowl Co-Ed Touch Football game on Super Bowl Sunday and as I finished the list, I realized that nobody on the report had a “knee injury” this year. It’s an interesting little footnote on the past seven years of our lives but one that will probably live on for many years to come.

It all really hit me about fifteen months ago when Stephanie and I were entertaining friends at our house. Will and I were shooting the breeze on the couch when I overheard his wife, Kristin, say to Stephanie, “Oh my God, I almost forgot, guess who has a ‘knee injury?’”

“Who?” Stephanie responded excitedly.

“Joanna. Actually, she had a ‘knee injury’.”

“That’s so awesome, I’m so happy for her. And Danielle won’t be playing in the Snow Bowl game this year either because she has a ‘knee injury’ as well.”

“That’s great.”

And from there, the conversation about “knee injuries” continued while I sat back and smirked. It was odd for me to hear them talking about “knee injuries” as commonly as most people would discuss the weather or the daily news. It was a weird conversation for them to have but as they continued, I just settled back into the couch and patted myself on the back.

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