Hello World

When I was about six years old I played soccer for a team my parents coached called the Guilford College Eagles.  Most of my teammates were a year older than me due to the two year age brackets our local league used.  One of these teammates was a new kid in town whose family had just moved from Michigan.  His name was Ben Furnas.

The Eagles proved to be a resilient and loyal bunch, as a large core of the team moved along together through the recreation, Challenge, and Classic soccer ranks.  Before long, I was 17 years old and had been playing for more than 10 years with a whole group of guys.  A few of us all went to Guilford Middle and Western Guilford together and ended up playing on school teams for four years in addition to our club ball.

So you can imagine how hard it was to say goodbye to my seemingly lifelong teammates when they all graduated from high school and I still had my senior year.

Alas, I ended up matriculating to UNC one year later and when figuring out who I wanted to room with, I came up with a perfect solution.

My old friend Ben.

During our first week together in Teague Dorm it became readily apparent that in spite of our decade spent together on the soccer pitch, we didn’t know a ton about what made the other tick.  Sure, we were good friends - in a high school guys who were one year apart in school kind of way.

During that first week we spent a lot of time in the room together, but didn’t talk a ton.  You see, I was too busy playing Tiger Woods golf on my PC and Ben was immersed in the joys of Instant Messenger.

I kid you not – you think I’d make this self-deprecating stuff up?

It took about a week to unofficially break the ice – I think the seminal moment was when we were walking back from dinner at Lenoir and I noticed him humming the tune to Don McLean’s American Pie.  I started singing the verses and Furnas joined suit.  By the time we got back to the dorm we’d flat driven the Chevy to the levy and the levy was dry – but that day was no day for dying.  It was the start of a great friendship.

A few months later Ben started hanging out with a lovely lady from Mooresville, NC named Ivey Jackson.  I could tell how much he liked Ivey by the fact that he let her score a few goals in their foosball matches in our room.  Before long they were dating, which continued uninterrupted until the spring of 2004 when they married.

Fast forward 8 years from freshman year and Ben and I are closer friends than ever.  After living under the same roof for three years in college and in close proximity in Durham after college, Ben and I developed a bit of a second nature for knowing what the other was going to say or do.  Many times we’d find ourselves laughing at the other when no one else in the room knew what was going on.  Such was the nature of the bond.

So you can imagine how weird it’s been since moving to NYC and not seeing Ben in person.  Thankfully, we’ve been able to keep up via email and phone.  And, of course, Furnas is a faithful reader and commenter on this blog.

I tell you all this as a bit of background to express how overjoyed I am that Ben is now a Dad.

On Saturday, October 25 around 6:00am, Ben and Ivey welcomed their first son, Jackson Christopher Furnas, to the world.  To quote Ben in an email he sent out the next day, “He is built for speed at 6lbs, 5oz and 20 inches long.  despite having some of my genes in him, he still looks pretty darn good to me.”

He looks good to us too, Ben.  All the best to you and Ivey.

Since Ben doesn’t have a blog of his own, I thought I’d publish a pic since I’m the proud former roomie of Dad.