‘Tis A Most Excellent Wish! But Why One So Preposterous?

Time travel? Nope. Invisibility? Nah. Flying? No thanks!

Like Bill & Ted, I could only hope to know how to “be excellent to one another”…

“If you had one super power, what would it be?” I pondered this classic question on a recent family road trip, as part of an ice-breaking card game called Chat Pack.¹https://www.chat-pack.com/

Now, before I go any further, you may be wondering why I was playing an ice-breaking game with my own family members. Well, as it turns out, there is a lot we don’t know about those nearest and dearest to our hearts. For example, when your dearest mother somehow manages to incorporate having large tracts of vegetable gardens into almost every question–no matter how unrelated having large tracts of vegetable gardens might seem to the questions in question–then you might finally get the hint that you better get on the ball on purchasing a large tract of land for which she can retire and garden her heart out.²Yes! We did it! We just bought that “large” (10-acre) tract of land! Just this week! We finally did it! But more on that later, as I’m bound to have plentiful remodeling/homesteading shenanigans stories in the very near future.

Anyways, as I was saying, I was left to ponder what super power that I would actually like to have. I once read an article on the vast moral/ethical rabbit holes that burdened the classic answers of “flying” and “invisibility”, so I had to come up with something more original. I had long maintained that the proper answer for me would be “the ability to speak any language, and fully grasp all the cultural nuances associated with each.” And this would indeed be a very bad-ass super power.

However…well, I figured I would try to stick with something more realistic and less self-centered. The answer I came up with? Well, I think it would just be dandy to have the ability to know what would make somebody happy (even if they don’t).

Heck, I’ve spent too much of my life running my mouth off and staying stupid shit that has hurt other people way too many times. Maybe I’m just trying to atone for those sins. But seriously, what a great power that would be? You know, actually making the world a better place?

While I haven’t been the best at being a compassionate empath, I have on several occasions managed to achieve the goal by dumb luck. And in honor of my traditional writing strategy of clumsily trying to tie together several random thoughts bouncing around my head, I’d love to share with you those two, very magical, times…

“Welp! It looks like I’ll be staying up all night working on my philosophy project that’s due tomorrow…”

My college girlfriend, the (in)famous “Tiffany Chestnut”³Not her real name, you dummy. That’s just what the Pornstar-Name Generator just spit out for her. paused after sharing the fact that she her procrastination had finally caught up with her. I really wanted what was best for her…but, what, oh what, could that be?

“Well, looks like it’s past 8 pm, so I better get on home so you can focus on that!” I didn’t say.

That’s what I wanted to say, because honestly, I thought if I stuck around, my constant goofing-off and joke-cracking would selfishly make it impossible for her come up with “Forty examples of analogies”–or at least that’s what I think the assignment was.

Whatever it was, she had to fill out 40 index cards, and she was currently sitting at ZERO. It would take her forever with me distracting her, right? Right…?

By some dumb stroke of luck, I instead hesitantly asked if she would like me to help her, that I would be happy to, though I was tired and didn’t know how late I could stay up with her.

To my surprise, she said ‘yes!’ I mean, you saw that plot twist coming, but to me, in that moment, there was no logical reason for her to want to keep my borderline-ADHD ass around when real work needed to be done.

Happy to oblige–but incredibly tired–I suggested I go back to my apartment and take a 45-minute power nap before coming back to help her power through those 40 index cards.

In the end, it turned out to be one of the best memories we made together–you know, coming up with one outlandish analogy after another until 4 in the morning–stuff that quintessential college memories are supposed to be made of.

And to think that I about left her high and dry had I trusted my grasp of the situation! Thus I prove my point that I would have loved to known from the get-go that a late night of loopy “likes and ases” with her funniest friend was what her soul desperately needed in that moment.

Honestly, though, I had no idea the positive emotional impact it made on her until a month or so later, when she confided that moment was the moment that I won her heart over.

*checks notes*

*Ahem*–correction: almost won her heart over. In the end it wasn’t quite enough to convince her to go along with my ill-fated plan to get married (thank the Lordy Jesus in retrospect, though, amiright?!?).

Ah, yes, I clearly remember now…that was the part of the conversation where she broke up with me. To be clear though, it was the later part of the convo that essentially turned into a heartfelt eulogy for a friendship that had seen it’s share of touching moments.

If it helps you better emotional visualize the that of which I speak, just imagine it as a montage of still image from our memorable moments, all while The Golden Girls’ theme song sentimentally plays over it all. You know how it goes: “…Thank you for being a friend…”

“Old buddy, old pal! We don’t hang out enough–what say we meet up every Wednesday for some Chick-Fil-A?”

Again, ’twas back in my college days, and I had ran into a friend of mine from my Freshmen and Sophomore years, one that I hadn’t kept up much since then. Given that it was both fifth year at Kansas State–roughly a full 2-year gap–that translated to approximately 12 years in post-college time (it’s roughly equivalent to calculating the age of a dog, I do believe).

“Uh, yeah, that would be great,” my friend said in his trademark reserved manner.

Now, spoiler alert: nothing really exciting or notably humorous came of our several-month arrangement of breaking breaded chicken together every seven days. It was just to friends hanging out, mostly reminiscing about “the good ol’ days” in Putnam Hall, and commiserating over the fact that we were now the weathered old geezers on campus. We probably ruminated over our futures once we left college, and even shared a good laugh of the several girls that comprised the overlapping area of our respective “girls we attempted to date” Venn diagram circles.

Much like with Tiffany Chestnut, I actually never gave much more thought to those moments after he graduated and moved back to his native homeland of Johnson County, KS.

That was until I stepped off the plane in the Kansas City airport a few years later, when he was my host for the weekend while I was in town for the wedding of a mutual friend of ours. There he was holding a sign like all the chauffeurs do, but instead of my name, it simply said “My Best Man”⁴Technically, I think it said “Best Man BJ”, but honestly I don’t like actually spelling out my name in these blog posts, despite at the very top it says “By B.J.” Lol?

That was one of the most pleasant surprises in my life, I must say. A little scary, yes, because immediately I realized that meant I would probably need to give a wedding toast in a few months when they actually got married. But overall, it was one of the most humbling honors bestowed upon me.

He could tell that I was slightly surprised, and later that weekend he kindly gave me more context for why he asked me to fill that once-in-a-lifetime role. Now, out of respect for his privacy, I won’t really go into detail, but the main takeaway is that at time in his life when he really could have used a friend–remember, being a 5th-year Senior in college usually means that the vast majority of the friends you made as a Freshman have already moved on–I was there for him.

Simple as that.

And again, it’s not on account of me being super-sensitive to the needs of others. There is a long and well-documented history of evidence to the contrary, my friend.

Nope, this was one of the times that I accidentally got it incredibly right. And again, further support for my claim about what one of the best super powers one could have. It would be great to have that lightning a bottle–you create magic twice and you want to figure out how to capture it, no?

And sure, I made Tiffany Chestnut feel pretty good in the above anecdote. But with ol’ Roger Dodger? This time, it was so good that I actually made it to the altar with him…

Hmm, now that I think about it, the proverbial point of the story might actually be “always gamble on being kind and thoughtful to anyone you meet–even flattering is an acceptable standard mode of operation. “Unabashed flattery???” you say? Hey, ain’t nothing wrong with recklessly making somebody feel good about themselves…

…okay, I just thought of one exception to that statement. You remember Nurse Cami, right? Yeah, we all saw the moral logjam “being kind and thoughtful…and even flattering” got me into that time. Hell, if I would have had that wonderful super power that I’ve been gushing about, well…I would have desperately avoided any and everything that would have made ol’ Cami happy. Um…yeah…that’s definitely one person I would never want to end up at the altar with (in keeping with the theme of this essay, of course).

What’s that you say? “Sheesh! Going on about Cami again? Seriously?!? Another shameless plug for The Long Tale Of COVID?” Oh brother, let me tell you: I ain’t gonna stop shamelessly, unabashedly self-promoting everyone that fustercluck of a misadventure until it’s picked up by NetFlix as a miniseries…

Content created on: 6/7 January 2023 (Fri/Sat)

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