The Ballad of Captain Fantastic

College is one of those times where the unexpected seems to shape you forever.  Sometimes it involves a conversation with friends in a pitch-dark dorm hallway that changes the way you approach the world, or maybe a crazy party that ends up with you meeting your wife.  On one early weekday morning, on what was the windiest day of the year in Boston, MA, my life was irreparably altered from that point forward.  But this story starts two years before that, in Claflin Hall, part of Boston University’s West Campus facilities.

Earning Respect

People make a big to-do about step-parents and how they affect the kids, but no one ever thinks about the collateral damage to everyone else; specifically, say, the original kid’s friends.  One New Years Eve, almost unexpectedly, the friend who I was closest with growing up in high school got a new step-dad.  His mom had married Phil, this big, New Jersey I-Talian type, and he swaggered about everywhere he went.  It wasn’t that he had to flex around or anything.  He just put out the energy that says “I’m damn well in charge and you’re all gonna fall in line.”  I respected the man before I ever entered the house he came to live in, thereby losing the title of “friend’s house” and turning into “Phil’s New House That I Best Respect.”