Ben There, Dunned That

I didn't make it to Reconciliation (aka confession) on Saturday, but I did this evening – and just got back here at home less than half an hour ago. As I said on Friday, it's impossible to describe, but rest assured that this is a real and truly profound experience of soul and spirit and mind. I'll add this sacrament to my list of promised blogs, so I can tackle it on a content-poor day. It is both humbling and – to borrow a word from The Simpsons – embiggening.

Check out the comment at the very bottom of my previous post; Spartacus shook my hand, yanked the thermometer out of my mouth, gave me a boot in the rear (and that's not a size 7 boot he wears, either), and shoved me back out onto the praying – er, playing – field… when I really want to gaze at my navel some more and continue internalizing this evening's experience. Well, so be it. Pox vobiscum, Sparky! Just kidding. 

Sitting next to punster Ben has been an entertaining experience… and probably a foolish mistake of the corporate director who allocated cubicles: putting us together is like adding, oh, a hefty dollop of glycerin to a big beaker of nitric acid – or perhaps slamming together two barely subcritical radioactive masses. ("Mass" being quite the apt word for me, for several reasons.) Or he may have been wise in keeping us confined to one area... and just outside his office.

Actually, Ben-ster doesn't need instigation from me; for example, the bits and pieces of his telephone calls that I hear often have me shaking my head in bafflement… with a question mark over my own head as to whether I might sound a bit the same. Cases in point: 

Ben, on phone; very friendly voice – he's just noticed his voicemail light is on: "Is that you on my voice mail?" [pause] "It is?" [pause, then sincerely:] "Do you want me to give you a quick call?"

For this next one, bear in mind that the gentleman is an attorney by academic training, though currently he functions as a bit of a liaison between our corporate department, and vendor companies who assist us in some of our internationally focused work. He turned forty last year, has a very boyish face with a hint of chipmunk-cheeks, hair parted on his left – basically very clean-cut and conservative-looking. However, that's just camouflage. 

We're also both blandly Caucasian. (Yours truly looks like John Ritter (just before his death in 2003) with a mustache – plus goatee in Fall and Winter. There is a slight out-of-kilter look about my eyes, but I hardly look in tune with the world at large anyway… a state of withdrawal that I am, in fact, beginning to achieve in reality. I, too, seem harmless.)

Ben, on phone: "As Tone Lōc said, 'Let's do it'." [pause] "What song was it?"

Me, unintentionally eavesdropping: "'Funky Cold Medina'." Wrong. I am so hopelessly white some days; it's "Wild Thing". 

Besides a bowl or two of good chocolates on my desk, I also keep a small stash of flatware in one of the drawers (plus cups, napkins, some drinks, chips, etc.) for those times I forget to bring some with my lunch, or someone else on our team does. Last week Ben came by and admitted he didn't have all the cutlery he needed for eating his lunch. Spoon, yes; knife, ditto. But –

So I handed him his missing item. Ben admitted, "I fork-got mine." 

"Well," I fired right back, "that'f very knife!"