One of my friends recently commented to me via email that she didn't have a very exciting day job. I told her that even if I were to accidentally save someone's life by administering the Heimlich in our cafeteria while Dan Brown's editor looked on, I still wouldn't have anything on my brother's work day, and I sent her this video of one of his job assignments for April. "Is he the one singing the national anthem?" she asked. Um, no. He's the one flying the plane over Shea Stadium for the last home opener that the Mets will ever play there. I took a personal day after getting the news that my dad had arm-twisted Opening Day tickets out of one of his hometown bar drinking buddies and that my stepmom had declined accompanying him upon learning that A-Rod doesn't play for the Mets. Even if I didn't like baseball, I would have been all over this for largely spiteful reasons. On my last layover at home, I logged some Inn time with my dad and two different people double-taked at me and then went "You have a DAUGHTER?" to my father, who has apparently failed to mention the fact that I exist during the last 800 or so hours he's put in at that fine institution. "Oh, you mean the one who just had the baby," one of them answered herself. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no, that's my sister-in-law. You're just going to have to come around to the fact that he has children that aren't producing babies, flying jet planes, or going to Harvard. Oh, but I did get dressed all by myself this morning, and my group leader says I can move out of the locked unit and into the halfway house as soon as I learn to go to the bathroom alone. Jesus. Apparently being the only girl is no longer enough to warrant me a cursory mention between Guinnesses, so I'm going to have to apply myself to making sure I show up in the background of pictures where my brothers, Brendan (Bud) & Patrick (Peej), are doing something awesome. Luckily, I am fantastic at being spiteful. No, really. Just today I caught myself thinking that it might be fun to vote for John McCain to spite someone. THAT's how serious I am about this genre of motivators. Additionally luckily, Bud and Peej both had moments of greatness in the pipeline, starting with the opening day fly over and winding up with Peej's graduation in May, which I will distinguish from my own college graduation by not playing Tetris on my Game Boy through most of it. And by graduating with half of Peej's GPA, but whatever. I met my dad at Penn Station, as he decided that this would be his introduction to the subway system so that he can get on with his plan of coming into the city and wandering around now that he's approaching "the autumn of his career." "I got you a metrocard," I told him, and watched as he got way, way more excited over that than any present I've handed him in my adult life. Had I known it would be that easy, I would have just wrapped up a NJ Transit train schedule every time his birthday rolled around instead of hunting down obscure books on the gardening habits of presidents or comparison treatments of the Gospel according to Mark and the music of Blood, Sweat & Tears or whatever the heck he's into these days. "So it goes like this? Right like this? This is how I do it?" he said, miming my actions of getting through the barrier but never actually applying the card to the swiping mechanism and making people veer around him as he stood there. "Like this? And then I can just walk right through?" YES, dad. For the love of GOD, please join me on the other side of the turnstile. "Isn't this fun? This is a nice preview of my old age for you, when you're going to have to drag me around on a leash because I'll be all DURRRRRR," my dad cheerfully told me once he had used one of his many graduate degrees to enter the subway station, immediately launching into his impression of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. We made it to Shea without killing any rabbits. I'm a little upset that this is the last season at Shea, for obvious reasons, but I'm also secretly thrilled that by the time I'm mature enough to have children and/ or dogs, I'll be able to name one of them after the stadium without the connection being as obvious as if, say, I named him/ her Citi Field. Plus, there won't be much of a shocking transition to the new field, as the boys are going to play all of this season literally in the shadow of it. We were about an hour early getting to our seats, so we had plenty of time to take care of the hot dog eating portion of the day, and my dad's Things That Make Me Happy stream of consciousness monologue. "Man, I love baseball. I don't understand people that like football. Baseball is so much better. I love baseball. Know what else I love? YouTube," he declared. This wasn't as huge a shock as if he had said, say, Facebook, or music recorded in the last decade, or pants that aren't sweatpants -- I've heard about my dad's love affair with YouTube before. "I don't have to watch anything anymore. I missed the last NCAA game and-boom!- it's up on YouTube. Or the Obama race speech. And you can fast forward through anything that's boring," he went on cheerfully before his tone became serious. "But they just blocked YouTube at the office." "No! That's awful! How are you going to watch the trunk monkey ads?" I asked, remembering when my dad was fond of acting out the commercials that showed monkeys coming to the aid of stranded motorists. "No more trunk monkey, no more darth vader goes grocery shopping," he said sadly. I didn't ask for clarification on the second one, but it sounds exactly like something senior partners should be devoting themselves to during billable hours. I thought Bud had the coolest job of the day, but we later found out that one of his, uh, coworkers? pilot-mates? flew up to NY ahead of the boys who were doing the fly over so that he could stand behind home plate from batting practice through the national anthem and radio to the pilots. So while I was having a hot dog, he had a bunch of the Phillies come up to him and go "Hey man, were you in Iraq?" and then have their eyes get really wide when he said yes. I look forward to the day when professional athletes are envious of and impressed by what I do for a living, and I am happy to have David Wright over to the office to watch me do V-lookup in Excel (which is an actual thing, not a dirty metaphor, get your mind out of the gutter) any time he wants to make that happen. It was also, as I understand it, this guy's job to sing along to the national anthem into his headset so that Bud could time the fly over for the ending. If you've already watched the YouTube video then you know that this didn't work out perfectly -- due to some issues with the opera singer, Bud was 12 miles away when the anthem started. But I also look forward to the day when I can cover 12 miles in under 2 minutes. When they announced that the fly over would be happening, my dad immediately tapped the person sitting in front of us on the shoulder and said "That's my son!" then he remembered he had an offspring with him already and, in some attempt to include me in our family awesomeness, slung his arm around my shoulder and pointed at me saying "and her brother!" Phew, I feel much better now. Not about having my association with Brendan clearly spelled out for complete strangers who don't care, but that I didn't have to worry that that guy thought I was there as my dad's date and not child. This is a fear I have with all of my male relatives, regardless of age and the fact that we all have the same face, and one of the biggest indicators that living in new york has messed me up. Why, of course I'd love to pay $1100 to live in a box! And it's not unreasonable at all for men in their 50s to date women my age! Seriously! During college, someone once mistook my little brother for my boyfriend, and ever since then I've been really into loudly and publicly declaring my relations in situations that don't warrant that kind of attention, at all. "Well, DAD, mass sure was great today, I'll meet you at the car!" "Hey Patrick, what are you getting mom for mothers' day? Since we have THE SAME MOTHER, and all." I took a video of the fly over on my camera and intended to post it but the YouTube ones are, remarkably, much better quality. I have a bit of a shaky hand for a videographer, something I'll have to figure out before my mom and I head out on Road Trip USA 2008, since I recently decided that I'm going to buy one of those flash memory video camera things so I can record footage of my mom and I at Graceland, oohing and aaahing over Elvis' toilet. So I chucked the video of the fly over due to the issues I had with its quality, and also because as soon as they got to "and the hoooooome of thhhheeeeee..." you can hear my dad and I both shouting "BRENDAN! Come on, Brendan!" as if we could summon his multi, multi million dollar jet plane with just the dulcet tones of our voices. And the planes came, and it was awesome, and people in Shea Stadium high fived each other and my brother flew over their heads, which is not something a lot of people can say that they've seen. Bud landed at LaGuardia and then had seats on the other side of the stadium, but he came over to visit during the 7th inning stretch. My dad didn't wear anything Mets related to the game, because he thinks wearing baseball jerseys to a baseball game makes you look "silly." (Spoken to the girl who was, at the time, wearing 4 different pieces of Mets apparel, including a Reyes jersey). Falling down in public for the sole purpose of embarrassing your preteen daughter is apparently fine, but showing support for your lifelong favorite team by wearing the appropriate apparel comes in at "silly." Fine. True to form, my Mets lost, but I (almost) didn't care.