We'll always have New Haven

IN TRANSITION #18

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 27, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Yale may keep coming up the loser, but at least they know how to throw a pretty good party.

I slept late last Sunday. I just lay in bed even as the scant few hours of November sunlight slowly waned. Life as a new college alumnus never felt so lazy.

I had returned close to midnight Saturday from New Haven, where alongside my collegiate former brethren, some friends and I had taken part in the raucous tailgates outside the Harvard-Yale game. It was my first Game post-graduation, and all in all, not tremendously different from the ones I remember from my undergraduate years. It was like stepping into a time warp for the weekend and being given the permission to act incredibly stupid once again.

Even if Monday morning I had to wake up and go to work.

The day was historic. The first overtime game in 122 meetings of the two schools, the first triple-overtime game in Ivy history, the Crimson's fifth consecutive win over the Eli (every year since I arrived in Boston). And surprisingly enough, despite the debauchery and, let's face it, extravagant bingeing (about 30 people were carted away from the Yale Bowl for evaluation after excessive alcohol consumption), not a single alcohol-related arrest or injury. Even the weather was nice.

''It's always more fun at Yale," my friends and I agreed in the car on the way back. Perhaps it's nothing more than a ''grass is always greener" (and the beer more plentiful) phenomenon, but something tells me larger forces are at work here to make us envious of Connecticut.

Forces such as Boston Police Department Captain William B. Evans, commander of the Allston and Brighton districts, who has made curbing underage and unruly drinking a personal crusade. Last year, when The Game was hosted at fair Harvard, Evans gave students and administrators football-sized headaches. Kegs, banned at the tailgates since 2002, made a slight return only as a controlled substance, IDs were checked at the gates, wristbands were required for revelers 21 or over, students and alums were forced to pick up separate tailgate tickets at the box office. And despite being lauded as a healthy success by most standards -- no near-death ambulance trips, no severe drop in fun levels -- Evans was irate.

''To me, that day was a disgrace," Evans later told The Harvard Crimson. ''Within a week I had three Harvard deans in my office, and I told them that that day will never go on like it did again."

New Haven, on the other hand, at least we'll always have New Haven. This year, tales of strict new policies at Yale were for the most part exaggerated. The New York Times had a report over the weekend on the resistance the college was facing from alums to those rules. But the ban on drinking games and the threat of shutdown by the start of the third quarter didn't cause any measurable disturbances. The tailgates my fellow students and alums have come to know and love were back, as well they should be. For one day out of the year, Harvard and Yale students -- like everyone else -- can afford to kick back and throw a silly indulgent celebration for the sake of celebration.

Alums, too. And those of us who aren't yet ready to extricate ourselves entirely from undergraduate life -- us, too. My friends and I never did stumble upon the alumni tailgates.

''They're kind of dull," my friend Alex, a Harvard senior, told me. He gestured toward their mysterious locale across the street when I asked if he knew where they were. ''But I have to hand it to them. They've got bottle after bottle of Harpoon lined up."

We both looked down into our red plastic cups of watery light keg beer. At least I've got something to look forward to.

Benjamin Toff, a recent grad making (and resisting) the transition from college student to working stiff, lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Read the reply from Capt. Evans (12/11/05).

The neighborhood ties that don't bind

IN TRANSITION #17

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 20, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

It's nearly Thanksgiving and we still have Halloween candy on our kitchen table. In the fruit bowl, embarrassingly enough (though at least to our credit, we have a fruit bowl).

Most of the candy is long gone; what's left are the items that nobody wanted -- a couple of Tootsie Pops, a small bag of Peanut M & M's, the sad remnants of a holiday we were probably too old to be celebrating anyway.

Try as we might, Halloween just wasn't the same as a grown-up. My roommates and I drank a couple of beers out on the front porch of our old triple-decker. We lighted a jack-o-lantern and watched the kids trickle by our quiet little block.

A few boys, 15 to 16, didn't bother saying ''trick or treat" as they stuffed their sacks. Others were so shy and young, they hardly dared to look at us. All in all, we had somewhere between 30 and 40 revelers at our door.

It was my first Halloween as a candy giver rather than receiver. I suppose that reversal was an inevitable part of coming of age, but the holiday seemed particularly confusing to me this year. I had never encountered any of these children before. Who were their parents that they allowed their kids to consume such massive quantities of sugar? And how could they let their children wander about freely talking to strangers like me?

Presumably, just a few decades ago, Halloween made a little more sense. When you know all your neighbors and your neighbors' kids, the celebration could potentially turn into something resembling a block party, something to strengthen community bonds, something that everyone could enjoy together.

Not on my block. The strange candy-gathering ritual came and went so mechanically. The kids, the parents, my roommates and I -- we were all just crudely marking the date by going through the motions.

Little by little, every old triple-decker in my Somerville neighborhood will be renovated and replaced by condos. Already, most of us are grad students, young professionals, people with no real ties to our community. We are relatively transient. Kids are scarce.

Sometimes I'll wave hello to a neighbor or two on my way home from work, but we've never actually met. The insides of their homes will likely remain forever mysterious. I've only spoken to one of the four people who live upstairs above us. (I hear their cats scurrying across the floor every night, but I've never seen them.)

It's the quiet, anonymous loneliness of life in this city that has stuck with me since Halloween. And it's that feeling that lingers weeks after the pumpkins have all rotted and been discarded.

A friend of mine braved Christmas alone last year for the first time, just months after moving to Boston. He said it was the worst experience of his life. He volunteered at a homeless shelter so as to ensure some contact with other human beings.

I'll be with family later this week for Thanksgiving. It's a holiday I skipped out on last fall; I drove up to Montreal with a friend to drink Canadian beer and escape from the stresses and pressures of college.

This year, turkey and stuffing and loved ones close by sounds, well, downright reassuring.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

A guilty spectator, at 22, to this war

IN TRANSITION #16

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 13, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

A few weeks ago I engaged in a cellphone argument in the middle of South Station. It was about American foreign policy. Sort of. My friend wanted a job in Iraq, and I thought she was crazy.

''I'm tired of spending all my time reading and writing about it, having never been," she said. ''It's the place to be in the world for what I want to study." She was right, I must admit, although I thought her career advancement in international security affairs was beside the point.

''Why don't you work in a place that's less likely to get you killed?" I asked. ''How about a formerly war-torn region of the world?"

The particulars of our argument were less important than the phone call that interrupted it --the phone call I didn't answer. Only after I hung up (or was hung up on, I can't remember which), did I receive that voice mail.

The message began with heavy breathing and then uncontrollable sobs. I heard something garbled about a group of men. It was all so incomprehensible between gulps of air and steady tears. I distinctly made out the words ''11 people." And then this eerie cry:

''You've got to do something, Ben. You've really got to do something."

I had been pacing back and forth through the lobby of South Station throughout the earlier phone call, probably drawing far too much attention to myself than one should ever draw in a busy transportation hub these days. I stopped abruptly while I listened to the voice mail. I watched the people milling about so bored, so aimless. I assumed the worst. An attack? Rape?

I dialed her number. She answered calmly.

''Hi," she said. ''Umm, sorry about that hysterical message."

In a strange collision of cellular airwaves, my friend's message concerned, yes, Iraq. Eleven men -- several of them younger than ourselves -- had been killed that day. Their photos had been plastered on the evening news, and my friend had lost it.

Back on the phone, we nervously tried to make light about her emotional outburst. How ridiculous! To get so worked up about a few pictures on TV. And it's not like we haven't seen pictures like that every few days in the paper!

Still stranger: How anesthetized we've become.

America observed Veterans Day this past Friday -- a holiday that had come and gone 22 times in my life without so much as a moment of silence. I've had no immediate family in the military -- save for a grandfather who once served in the Coast Guard. I have no friends in Iraq or Afghanistan. I only know one or two people, period, currently serving in any of the armed forces.

I have been a guilty spectator to this war -- too sidelined from the powers that be to have any say, too insulated from the war for it to have any direct impact on my life. Sure, I spoke out against the decision to invade. I marched, wrote editorials, participated in dorm room discussions late into the night.

But the question was never put to me directly. Would I go fight? In fact, nobody asked me to make any sacrifice. There was no draft, no recruitment at my school, no personal repercussions for a decision I didn't support. Like so many liberal Americans, I've watched the pictures come back with a sickened ''I told you so" anguish, and then continued to go about my business -- detached from the horror unfolding day after day in the Middle East.

Last week I browsed photos online of those who have died in Iraq. Their smiling faces, their youth and hope, so haunting. So many 22-year-olds, like myself. Some are just out of college, others left temporarily, and still others never had the opportunity. Instead of working through these strange post-diploma days, contemplating the prickly questions of what direction to set out into the world, how to transition into a 9-to-5 routine, etc., they fought and died in a war because their president told them to do so.

I suppose the least I could do is notice.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

This piece was also published in the other Globe zone sections in advance of Veteran's Day, so that it could be sent out over the New York Times wires.

According to the Myrtle Beach Sun News, I'm a syndicated columnist.

And here's a link to the piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Apparently, I was published alongside Charles Krauthammer and Ellen Goodman. And here it is in the Winnipeg Free Press. And here in the Grand Forks Herald.

When a diploma fails, try a plunger

IN TRANSITION #15

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | November 6, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Dragging a $3.50 plunger behind me through the aisles of the supermarket just prior to closing the other night, I wondered if I had reached bottom.

Nope. Just adulthood.

It had been one of those inevitable days of maturation I'd been waiting for. A perfect storm of fiascos had formed -- everything from a clogged shower in the bathroom to the freezing wintry conditions outside. And then this: an overflowing stopped-up toilet.

I had come home late from a long day of work and found one of my roommates hunched over the toilet with an old plunger too small to properly plunge. In between flushing attempts we chatted about his ailing health.

''There's nothing worse than trying to fall asleep in a freezing cold room," he said, and then returned to the toilet bowl.

Despite the unseasonably cold temperatures, we had yet to switch on the heat. Too cheap, too lazy, whatever the reason, we had all just tried to live with the sub-40-degree nights with as many layers and blankets as possible. But with my roommate's health -- and this new toilet problem to boot -- I figured maybe it was time to do something about our living conditions.

Raised in the warmth of Tucson, I had imagined -- like most things I had imagined about living in my own apartment -- that turning on the heat would be a major ordeal. I had heard confusing anecdotes from friends about having to call the natural gas company; another friend mentioned something about flipping a mysterious switch in the basement. In our case, it was easier than any of that. In fact, not surprisingly, all we had to do was find the thermostat -- which turned out to be prominently displayed in the living room.

One of the lesser known (and debatable) downsides of attending college at Harvard is that almost everyone lives all four undergraduate years in dormitories, which means, among other things, that you never learn how to cook, clean, or tend to the many unforeseen incidents that arise when you're responsible for your own apartment.

Or at least that's the line my friends and family always gave me.

''You won't have any idea what goes into taking care of your own place," one friend warned over the summer. ''I can't believe Harvard deprives you all of any real-life experience."

I suppose there's some truth to it. The utter lack of life skills training probably made the transition out of college that much more abrupt and confusing. This fall I have been consistently let down by my oh-so-meager culinary training. I've quickly tired of my rotating menu of canned beans, instant rice, and frozen dinners. (Fortunately, I have enough roommates and friends who are willing to cook for me in return for favors.)

But the fact is, in most respects, taking care of my apartment hasn't been especially complicated. I would even argue easy if it weren't for the other night. Sure there was that letter threatening to turn off the utilities right after we moved in, and there's that stuck window in the bathroom the landlord's been talking about fixing since back in August, but all in all, apartment living has been as I expected.

In fact, even the toilet turned out OK. After I sent my sick roommate to bed, another roommate came home desperate to pee. So I went on a late-night scavenger hunt to the grocery store for a new plunger and some pipe-clearing chemicals. Not to brag, but within minutes, voilà!: we were back to full-flushing action.

And the landlord came by the next day to fix the bathroom window -- just in time for the freak October snowstorm. Even the shower drain problem turned out to be just a clump of hair.

The experience has only emboldened me. College may not have taught me a lot of skills applicable to the real world, but really, I'm not in such bad shape. I can plunge a toilet after all.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.