Boris Timanovsky - Pen Pal 

 

I was overseas not that long ago on a business trip and my last evening there, we all went out and by then everyone was sick and tired of talking about work. So, we drank and we talked about other things like kids and families.

 

And this guy Vlad says that his 9-year-old daughter, Julie, has an assignment in her English class to find a pen pal. And he asked if my son Joseph would be willing to correspond with her. I said, "Sure," because of course he would. Then I fly back home to New York and I tell Joseph, and Joseph says, "No." [audience chuckle] And he wouldn't say why, but I figured it must be because Julie is a girl. Joseph is 11. And the way they teach him in school is romantic love is not a part of the curriculum yet.

 

But on the other hand, they are already taught about abstinence and how sex leads to pregnancy and pregnancy leads to additional responsibilities. [audience chuckle] So, if Joseph came to associate girls with additional responsibilities [audience laughter] and with less playtime as a consequence, like less time for his PlayStation, I can't blame him for that. 

 

But what am I going to do? I don't want to break the promise that I'd already made to Vlad. So, I thought, "How hard can it be? I'll do it." [audience laughter] And I went to Yahoo and I opened another email account there and I forwarded it to Vlad and I wrote to him that “Yes, Joseph would be happy to be Julie's pen pal.” And I checked that mailbox a few times in the week that followed and it was empty. And I thought maybe I was off the hook.

 

And then one night I came home late and I lived by myself. So, I checked my match.com messages first and then I went to this new email account and there was an email there from Julie. And I read it and I thought, "Yeah, I can do this." Because she wasn't asking me any difficult questions. She wasn't asking what I learned from the past relationships. [audience laughter] She wasn't asking what my true intentions are. She wasn't asking if I'm really divorced or just separated. [audience laughter] 

 

All she wanted to know was do I have a pet? What my favorite color is and who I want to be when I grow up. [audience laughter] But an hour later I still didn't have an answer. Because what was I going to say? That it would be nice to make senior vice president by the time I'm 40? [audience laughter] The reason I don't have a pet is because I dread the thought of coming home one night and finding it on the floor dead. [audience chuckle] That I've just gone over every color of the rainbow only to conclude that each color has some sort of an unpleasant memory [audience chuckle] connected to it. It was hard to concentrate. It was late. I wasn't fully sober. [audience laughter] My match.com screen kept blinking because somebody without a photo wanted to chat. [audience laughter] But I tried to remember how I would have answered Julie's questions years ago. So, I ended up writing to her that my favorite color is blue because it's the color of the ocean and I have a parrot. And when I do my homework, my parrot is sitting on my shoulder. And when I grow up, I want to be a sea captain. And my parrot and I will sail around the world.

 

And when I woke up the next morning, I turn on my computer and this is usually when I check my match.com messages again. But this time I was more interested in what Julie had to say about that whole sea captain thing than in the messages that I had waiting for me from my adult female, open-minded, easygoing, down to earth, outgoing and adventurous pen pals [audience laughter and applause] that were written in response to the very adult messages that I sent to them. And there was an email in that mailbox and I felt nervous about opening it.

 

And I opened it, and it wasn't from Julie. It was spam. Something about signing up to have affairs with married women or signing up to find out if your wife is having an affair, something like that. But I kept checking for new mail almost hourly that day. And in between checking for new mail, I asked myself all kinds of questions like, "Okay, so you wanted to be a sea captain. And then what happened?" [audience laughter] I remembered telling my parents that I want to be a sea captain. And my mom said that she's not aware of too many sea captains who are Jewish. [audience chuckle] And my grandma said, "What about Christopher Columbus? He was a Jew." And I remember everybody looking at my grandma not saying anything because pretty much anything my grandma said was ignored because she kind of lost her standing in the family ever since she was seen crying at President Brezhnev's funeral. [audience chuckle] And my dad said that Christopher Columbus doesn't count because he had converted. [audience chuckle] 

 

And my other grandma, who always argued with my mom no matter what the topic, she said, "What about her cousin's husband who was an accountant for a cruise line?" And my mom said “It's not the same thing.” And my grandfather said “He doesn't know about captains, but what he does know is that TV repairs is a pretty damn good business to be in.” And he said that one should look no further than his nephew Alec. His nephew Alec, who was a TV repairman, he visited us every couple of months whenever our old TV broke. And he walked around with this beat-up old rectangular briefcase filled with spare parts, all shapes and sizes. And he always looked like he was tired all the time. And I was remembering all of these things.

 

And I remember how I was dreaming about standing on the bow of a ship with the sun in my face and with the wind in my face and the ocean wave splashes in my face. And I thought that so much has changed since then, because now if I'm thinking about being in a ship, I see myself walking up and down the deck of some cargo ship anchored somewhere in the vicinity of Staten Island in a fog with nothing but those old rusty shipping containers around me and how lonely it probably feels.

 

And so, I kept waiting for Julie's message, and nothing was coming from her. And about a week later, Vlad called with some work questions. And then he said that he was really, really sorry, but Julie didn't want to be Joseph's pen pal anymore. And I said, "Why?" And he said he didn't know why. And I thought maybe it's because he didn't ask her any questions. And Vlad asked me if I read Joseph's mail, and I said, "No." So, he read it to me over the phone. And then he said that Joseph would probably be very upset if he didn't hear from Julie again. And I don't know what made me say that “Yes, he probably would be.” And Vlad said that if Julie wasn't going to write to Joseph, then he would. [audience laughter] 

 

I told him not to worry about it, but I must have sounded really upset because he said that “No, he'll write to him, only he wanted me to tell him what to write.” So, I said “I'll think about it.” And a week later he called to remind me. And I was in the middle of something, and I looked at this postcard from Florida that I had in my cubicle and it said, "Well, how about this? Dear Joseph, my favorite color is also blue, and my favorite animal is the dolphin. And when I grow up, I want to be a scientist and study dolphins and live on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean all by myself. And maybe you and your parrot can visit me there sometimes and bring me food and scientific supplies." [audience chuckle] 

 

And Vlad said that he liked it and he asked me to type it up and send it over to him [audience chuckle] because he wanted to make sure that he got it right. And I typed it up and I sent it over and he sent it back to me. And yes, he got it right. And I don't know how long an average pen pal relationship lasts, but I felt that ours had run its course and this is how it ended.

 

But sometimes when Vlad calls, he asks me how his pen pal is doing and does he still want to be a sea captain. And I tell him that, “Yes, his pen pal still wants to be a sea captain very much”. Because if he didn't, then what does he want to be? Thank you.