Reach the Beech

It's been a long day of blog silence, but now that everything has gone as well as we could have hoped and we're on our way home, each time I started to compose, it felt more and more like hubris to burden everyone with the details.

First, I know from the emails and texts that there's some concern about how we're getting home, and some of you have been doing some really lovely research to help us out, but the winner of this one is Susan Engeleiter of Data Recognition Corp., who is sending the company's jet to pick us up right here in Rochester tomorrow morning and deposit us, more or less, right next to our car at CVG airport. It's one of the most generous things anyone has ever done for us, and I thank her profusely for her kindness. What can you say about a company that in a little more than three weeks, saves an employee's life and then deposits her on her safe and sound on her own doorstep?

We've been very lucky this time, and I hope we don't ever need this kind of luck again. To belabor our good fortune by turning this blog into too permanent a fixture in our lives seems. . .I don't know what it seems--nihilist that I am, it's difficult to put into words that don't misrepresent my belief system--for now let's just call it tempting fate, bad karma, whatever.

More and more, though, I've come to believe that our universe is nothing more than a machine, nestled in and functioning as a part of another greater machine, and while we will probably never know the purpose of the machine our universe serves, our universe exists for one reason: To create irony.

I used to comfort myself with the idea that bad people get appropriately punished for their badness and the good in the end will out. Mind you, I never really believed this--I simply comforted myself with the idea.

But let's be clear about what I'm talking about. You know that guy who passed you doing 110 mph on the highway this morning? He won't get the ticket. It'll be you. One day, you'll be rushing home from work, 8 mph over the speed limit, and you will fall prey to a trooper who needs one more ticket for his monthly quota. The speeder will be promoted at work and buy an even faster car, which will cause him to draw the attention of Ryan Freel in a parking lot one evening, and the utility man will give him a three games worth of box seats to the Reds homestand against the Indians. You, on the other hand will have two points on your license and miss the season finale of "Heroes."

I hope this doesn't sound bitter because that's not at all how I mean it. When you tell the story later to your friends, they will have real empathy with you, they'll buy you a drink, and rip you a copy of the show you missed off of their TiVo's, and in the long run, you'll eventually feel OK again.

And even this isn't fair because you know what? That speeder is probably speeding from something that feels way worse to him than your ticket or dorky TV schedule--it's just less ironic to you. Everyone's going through some bad shit all the time, and everyone's bad shit feels like it's being spit out of the irony machine, and the reason it feels that way is that they're exactly right.

Here's Sherri: She's a good person who's lived as close to a zero-risk lifestyle as anyone I've ever known, except maybe her mother (who still ended up with cancer, herself). Then take, for example, me: An almost complete bastard who's taken virtually every lifestyle risk available. Who gets cancer? Well, the more ironic choice, of course. Good job universe.

Years ago, that rabbi-dude wrote a soul-soother called Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He didn't really need to write a whole book about something that can bee summed up in two bullet points:

1. Bad things are happening to everyone all the time
2. Everyone thinks he's too good for the stuff that happens to him

That's it.

The best we can ever hope for is to find a use for the information that the irony machine constantly spews at us, and as educators, Sherri and I tend to put things in terms of lessons learned. We've learned a tremendous amount about ourselves and our relationship from this experience. But just as importantly, we have learned about the strength of our village (this is what one of my favorite emailers called it). We've drawn so much strength from all of you that we can't imagine what would have happened if we had tried to do this without all of your support--from the people who gave up three weeks of their lives to help us out to the people who are covering for us at work, to the people who found ways to distract us when we needed it, to the people who offered us indispensible advice, left a kind voicemail, email, or blog comment.

There are so many things that we still need to evaluate honestly about our own past citizenship in our village, but we can also look toward the future. And here's what I know about that future: We will not ever be able to fully thank all of you for how you've helped us, but the irony machine's out there gunning for everyone, and while we hope you are not going to be its victim soon, when you need us, we'll be there.

I don't use the accident. I deny the accident.
--Jackson Pollock

GW