Regular

I’m interested in the difference, if there is one, between reliable and predictable, or, let’s say, between dependable and boring.

In both cases, the former term is an admirable quality, the latter, a trait we generally try to eschew. I’m perfectly happy being a reliable husband, father, and teacher; I get a little nervous when my wife, daughter, or students can predict beforehand what I’m going to do around the house or in the classroom.

Similarly, it’s comforting to know that there are certain qualities and experiences one can generally depend upon come a cool and dry Thursday evening in October, but at the same time be able to rest assured that those familiar shenanigans will—in spite of their familiarity (and perhaps, even to some extent, because of it)—rarely, if ever, be in the least bit boring.

Besides, I’d never seen a moon quite like the one that hovered over our hobo peleton as we wound around a newly-paved trail on top of Beacon Hill: the mist had softened and shaded the lunar satellite’s edges such that the normally two-dimensional disk in the sky looked instead like a silver sphere nestled in the downy heavens.

Nor do I recall the bomb from up there to our provision stop being so hilariously extended; two or three times I thought it had ended only to have the road dive deeper down into the welcoming woods.

And of course, fire is fire, but being fire, always burns anew, especially when fueled by palettes carried three miles by single arms on two-wheelers.

Joeball and I had pondered a bar in the middle of things to which we’d never been or at least, not in a while, but rolling out from the park, an inexorable gravity drew us all back to a familiar ID haunt and yet, even that was full of surprise: I, for one, had never before caroused in circles to an Angry Hippy version of Piano Man.