Table of Contents
{ACKNOWLEDGMENTS}
It is a surreal and daunting experience to acknowledge the many people I need to thank for their help, directly or indirectly, in producing this book. It is my first published book. Maybe it will be my only one. What if I miss someone and I never get the chance to correct the error in another book? And what order do I do this in? Will people be offended if theyre not first... or last, for that matter? Im feeling a lot of pressure. It is only my sincere appreciation for their efforts that compels me to continue.
First, Chris Levan. This book was a two-person effort. Chriss guidance, his modern take on Franklins virtues, and his encouragement helped create Ben & Me. When it was apparent that there were two books in Ben & Memy stumbles through Franklins virtues and Chriss weekly guide for my effortsChriss graciousness in letting me publish mine first completed the birthing process. Thanks, Chris.
My agent, Carolyn Swayze, took a flier on me with my first mystery novel. Without her patience and persistence in trying to find someone else to take a chance on me, I wouldnt be writing this acknowledgment. Youre the best, Carolyn! (Thanks also to Kris Rothstein.)
In Marian Lizzi, super-editor, Carolyn found a kindred spirit and lover of Benjamin Franklin. Her patience helped guide me gently through a process that was completely alien to me. Im sure it was occasionally painful and frustrating, but she never made it seem so. I wish for every author an editor like Marianand her super-assistant, Christina Lundy.
To those who reviewed this text, Hilary Drain, Jade Spalding, and Don MacPherson (and Mom, but she gets her own mention later), your words of wisdom, grammatical suggestions, and encouragement helped make this book a reality. Thank you.
I talked to a bunch of people during the thirteen weeks and after about the various virtues. Youll see their names scattered throughout the book, so I wont repeat them here. Thanks to all of you for your help and direction.
What can I say about Leland and Faye Gunn? I know everybody says that they have the best parents in the world, but theyre lying because I have the best parents in the world. They taught me right from wrong.
Life can be tough, whether youre trying to be a better person or just trying to get through the day. It helps to have great partners. Ive got the greatest. My wife, Michelle, and my children, Kelsey, Harper, and Darcy, make my life, virtuous or not, special and interesting. This book is dedicated to them.
{PROLOGUE}
The Wife, the Sloth, and Virtuous Ben
I AM A SLOTH.
Or so says my wife.
In a moment of mental weakness, I asked my spouse about her perceptions of me: good qualities, bad qualities, areas for improvement. The animal thing was a throwawaya little humor to lighten the mood. If I were an animal, what would I be? Thats when she hit me with sloth. My companion to the grave thinks of me as a tree-hanging herbivore.
{He is ill clothed that is bare of virtue.}
Maybe, I told myself, she had mis- taken the sloth for another animal. Bright as she is, shes no zoologist. Did she know that up to two-thirds of a sloths body weight consists of the contents of its stomach? Did she know that a sloth can muster the ambition to poop and pee only once a week? Did she know that their only real defense is to move so slowly that predators miss them altogether, walking right past without even noticing?
Surely she meant to say shark... or stallion. Id have taken stallion in a heartbeat.
Why? I asked, clearly compounding my earlier error. Why a sloth?
Well, maybe not a sloth, Michelle answered. I said a quiet, prayerful thank-you before she continued. Maybe a hippopotamus.
I blame Benjamin Franklin for all of this.
How could anyone blame good old Ben? After all, Franklin is the one figure of American history that seems so unabashedly un-blameworthy . Inventor, scientist, diplomat, politician, soldier, and, of course, printer. A Revolutionary Renaissance man.
Friendly and affable, Franklin charmed kings and commoners, loyalists and revolutionaries. As a diplomat, he excelled at emulating, to his advantage, the backwoods gentleman. He started a long and successful career as a writer by passing anonymous letters to his unsuspecting publisher brother in the guise of a sharp-tongued widow. His most famous accomplishment as an inventor (or philosopher, as scientists of the day were called) came through the use of a kite. How can you not like someone who conducts experiments by flying kites? He is, as biographer Walter Isaacson has said, the Founding Father who winks at us.
So how was this brilliant, quirky visionary implicated in my wifes matter-of-fact stomp on my ego? Ironically, it was my discovery of Bens struggles to become a better person that led to this moment of domestic disharmony. That and what I call the Triple T syndrome.
I am a living, breathing example of the Triple T syndrome. Were you able to see me, you would notice two things about my physical appearance. First, my hair is Thinning (thats T No. 1). Once endowed with thick, wavy tresses, I am now a victim of one of lifes cruel ironies. With each passing day, a few more hairs fall from my scalp to the shower floor. They are, metaphorically, the dropping of the blooms of my youtha visceral reminder that my time is passing. Im not sure of the female equivalent to Thinning. I might guess the change of life, but that doesnt start with a T, and Im liable to be swarmed by emails from perimenopausal women enraged that Id compare their state of hormone-induced agony to the relative insignificance of a few missing follicles. In any event, as my hair goes, so, I am reminded, goes my time on this mortal coil.
A glance down my frame reveals T No. 2: a Thickening of my waist (I actually spelled that waste at firsta nice Freudian slip). With each new dawn, I seem to take up a larger portion of the universe. I am not alone, of course, in this matter of my appearance. On this continent, our level of girth has become an epidemic. Im sure youve seen the same statistics as I have that suggest that over half of all Americans are overweight. They are usually displayed on some chart with a graphic of a little silhouette man with love handles and a potbelly. Sadly, thats me. Another reminder of T No. 2: I cant run like I once could. I get tired just watching basketball games now. I am less attractive than I was in my youth (in my case, this is truly unfortunate since I was starting that particular race from a long way back in the pack). I could be William Shatners body double (give or take a few inches off the top). I am Thickening and Thinning; I am more and less than I once was.
If the first two Ts seem like harbingers of doom, it is the third T that offers a glimmer of hopefalse, battle-scarred, unreasonable hope, but hope nonetheless. The third T is Thirsting. In the face of the first two Tswith their foretaste of aging and waning prowess, with their glimpse into the maw of mortality, with their backhand to the cheek of youthful promisewe seek to achieve before it is too late. It is these first two Ts that feed the last. We (read I in this case) see that our lives are finite, we feel our strength ebb, and we know that the time to make our mark on the world draws short. We are a beagle on its morning walkwe long to pee on the tree of life to mark our passing. We thirst to be better, to be more, to be something. Like Marlon Brando, we long to be a contender.
