The Green Monster

I've been to Boston once, but it doesn't really count. I was 15 or 16. We went as a family, stayed at a sweet hotel for a conference my dad was attending. I didn't want to be there, wanted instead to be on my Boston Whaler on the river, or on the phone with my girlfriend or in a semi-trance listening to Pink Floyd.

We hit Cheers and went around the city a bit, but I wasn't there, really. My dad wanted the two of us to hit Fenway Park and size up the Green Monster. Nah, I'm gonna hang at the hotel. What a shit.

It would have served us both better if he had punched me in the gut and kneed me in the face as a wake-the-fu%& up call, but that kind of thing is frowned up, and my dad didn't roll like that. He went by himself.

I have hated talking on the phone since that summer--a kind of existential response to wasting so much time tethered to a wall that could have been spent exploring, living. We did our share of living that summer also, but still.

Perspective seems to smooth out the rough wake we've kicked out. Or maybe perspective is just distance mixed with common sense and maybe we don't feel things as strongly now as when we were earlier versions of ourselves. I don't know.

I can tell you that if I go back to Boston, I'm going to Fenway Park. I'm gonna check out the Green Monster.