Editor's Note- 12/31/08

Sometimes I am certain that I would not be friends with me. Thank god B does not feel the same way. My NY FLY swan song. Fin.

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A friend recently asked me to explain what running feels like. She runs, too, but wanted to understand why I chose to define myself as a “runner”. Seemed so odd to the casual participant.

I couldn’t answer the question. I tap danced and told her that each run felt different to each individual and, while the high was true and biological, the experience was unique. I told her how I came to be a runner and how it brought my family together. I told her that the Flyers saved my life. Sappy, but true.

“What has kept you involved with the club?” We’ve seen the same answers in almost every Member Spotlight this year, because fortunately for most it is true: the people, the social events, the incredible friendships. When my number was up last May, I didn’t answer that question. So I will now. One perk of being Editor is getting a second chance, and this is my last one.

I joined the Flyers to establish a new identity outside of my career, relationship, and college and work friends who knew me in an already-defined context. The club enabled me to determine, and then regain, who I wanted to be and have since become. The empowering safety of a ready-made network of new, potential friends cannot be underestimated.

I met B at the Awards Gala two years ago. Neither of us knew many Flyers at the time and our conversation was brief. He doesn’t remember it, but I’ll never forget his smile.

The following month, B and I met again as guinea pigs for DG's now very successful downtown run. We ran together on Mondays, then Saturdays, then any time we could evade our other responsibilities. The first weekend in March was a tough one for both of us; through completely separate but cosmically parallel events we each became ‘singles’ for the first time in years.

We ran through it, though. B distracted me. He made me laugh and offered up his unique perspectives on running and relationships to fill the hours of road. (Those who have ever run with ‘Coach B’ know this is a practice he still continues, sometimes unsolicited, to this day.) He was the first number on my speed dial that spring, leaving work early to help me move the last batch of stuff to my new apartment, seeing me at both my strongest and most vulnerable, at the exact same moment.

So when he became Secretary last January and needed an Editor, I was in no position to decline.

Early in his tenure we wrote a tongue-in-cheek Secretary’s Letter about the newsletter “process” and how it results in a near blood bath the last week of each month. B and I occupy opposite ends of the tolerance spectrum. I read each article at least three or four times and will fall on my sword for a serial comma, word choice, or tense correction. He will spend hours conceptualizing, scouring the Web, gathering images, then laying out his visual take on pagination, which I don’t always understand and have been known to dismiss. He’s the Secretary, but he’ll listen, revise, or even scrap it and start over at my insistence. (I could not do this.)

As the year progressed, I came to dread the 15th of each month, when B would flood my Inbox with Word documents attached to emails that read simply, “Here you go. Thanks.” or “So it starts again.” I made no attempt to conceal my overly-dramatic sense of exasperation. But once
each issue was completed and posted to the Web site, I was always impressed by the outcome.

We were only half-joking when we wrote that article and, as work and real-life pressures have increased exponentially over the past year, the situation has become even more desperate. Last month we took a “time out” after a particularly stressful long-distance December Newsletter editing session.

He has thanked me numerous times for my help this year, in the form of dinner and baseball games and tennis matches and my first ever trip to Carnegie Hall. It’s embarrassing and always unnecessary. I wouldn’t have done this—complaints notwithstanding—if I didn’t love it or him,
and now it’s my opportunity to show thanks.

So, just like the rest of those profiled this year, the “amazing friendships” I have made within the club are what has kept me involved. And I know how incredibly fortunate I am to have made so
many of these in just two years. But, more so than any other, one Flyer in particular saved my life—and I can’t wait to just run and drink beer with him. Cheers, B.

Game on.