B.Rent Hagen da da da da DA!

Last week my dear friend Brent came across this great land in his virginal visit to New York. It’s a bit strange who you keep in contact with from high school; Brent has been a bit of a surprise reoccurrence and a lovely one at that. After James (who, for all intensive purposes, could be considered a wonderful ex husband and is inevitably in my life forever- this proven when my mother sent him cookies via mail and, due to my shock, let me know they had “over the years acquired an independent relationship together of which [I] am not a factor” and (!) that they had been keeping up via email) anyway-run-on-sentence- AFTER JAMES, Brent has been my only friend from high school that is not just a blast from the past, but someone I stay fairly current with. He is extreme, which I love, and is most always up to some such ridiculousness (like planning a trip to the artic circle via motorcycle… oh by the way the motorcycle doesn’t run and departure time is one month… oh and by the way he had never ridden a motorcycle). I like people who make a plan (the more ridiculous the better) and follow through. I have no doubt he will actually take said trip, regardless of everything and anything. Brent also shares a bit of displacement disorder that perhaps one will always feel when their home, the place they grew up, is a place they do not belong. We are able to speak quite at length and some mutual understanding about our upbringing, people, places, and the differences. There is something very easy and important about someone who knows you throughout time-that knows not just you, the now, but you, the path.
__

I feel like it is always best to walk around New York with a mission. The mission with Brent was the find the “best pizza in New York”, which, in this case, was Grimaldi's in DUMBO. We were also staking out ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, when a male/female pair past us with their tasty treats. Brent sized them up.

“We could take them.”

“Duh.”

We quickly came to the conclusion that we would be hard pressed to find a male/female tag team that could take us.

Neither of us has fought physically in the past, but none the less I don’t think it to be an untruth.

We are both sturdy people, sizable but quick, and would be great team (fighting) players. More than anything else we are passive but something in the frustration of it all… in the nicely-nice upbringing, in the displacement, in the passiveness… is just waiting for someone to cross us unknowingly. We would never strike without due cause (defense) but part of us perhaps wishing for the excuse to release and lash out.

We, of course, walked politely around the ice cream laden couple and waited patiently in line for our pizza.

However, consider yourself warned......