All That We Can Leave Behind

Wow.

Let's think about the victims here.

Imagine you're a young, marginally handsome, successful young man who works for the Boston Red Sox. Imagine you work alongside another marginally handsome young man in this same organization. Your boss sits you down, tells you you're both promoted, hands you a comb and tells you to get ready for the media. You deal with Shaugnessy's whining, the photoshopping skills of the blog community, the collective "whatever" from within I-495. You sigh, wishing you were rolling in hypothetical offers of one-night stands and free drinks without needing to answer the question, "When's Theo coming back? For real?"

You buy yourself a boat, maybe get one of those low-interest credit cards from Home Depot and fix up the place in Newton a little bit. Maybe some bamboo flooring, a couple of nice Persian rugs. You notify your accountant that you've gotten a raise, and you roll over your 401k. You open a college savings account for your kid. Life looks good.

Then you have to start answering more phone calls from the old boss. He keeps calling in with suggestions. He drunk dials late at night, begging you to take him back. You get tired of it. You have persistent chronic headaches and take to drinking a vodka tonic before bed and therapy sessions to relax yourself. You begin to snap at people.

"When's theo--"

"Shut UP!"

"...ld centerfielder going to come get his stuff? Or should we just torch it?"

Then, a mere 44 days after your promotion, you get demoted back to your old job, the old boss comes in and gets a title promotion, and the free drinks and offers of sex dry up completely. Your dreams of bamboo floors and Harvard for your kids fade away, but the headaches remain.

It was a good run, Ben and Jed. Thanks for the memories.