With less than a minute left in the scheduled program, the lights and broadcast were suddenly back on.
Neil Patrick Harris stood alone onstage. There was no introductory music, no dramatic camera sweep through the crowd. Just a static shot of Neil Patrick Harris and the steady buzz of the microphone soundboard, which had been on the whole time but only now was audible on the broadcast. Neil Patrick Harris stared straight ahead, pale and determined, looking both intensely focused and intensely disoriented at once, as if a pair of hands had reached inside him, shook him by something as deep and untraceable as integrity itself, and then placed him back exactly where he had stood, the same but forever different.
He also looked, in less abstract terms, as if someone were holding a gun to his head from offstage and forcing him to say something he didn’t want to say, which would eventually become a prevailing rumor about the night, backed up over the years, as rumors like this always were, by more and more people with less and less of a connection to the original event.
“The best thing in the world is love,” said Neil Patrick Harris. “We’re out of time. Good night.”
The next year and in all the years that followed, “nothing” was disqualified from competition.
The official statement put forth by the contest organizers explained that the competition was a competition for the best thing in the world, and that nothing was, by definition, “no thing,” the absence of a thing, and therefore had “no relevance to the competition.”
The logic was sound, even though it did nothing to explain how nothing had come to be nominated that one year; let alone become one of the three finalists; let alone become one of the two finalists; let alone—allegedly, possibly, apparently—come to have its name inside the final winning envelope; let alone who had nominated it, or what in the world it was supposed to have meant.
Whenever anyone asked Neil Patrick Harris about what had happened on that night, he would simply say, flatly, with a voice he seemed to have long ago deliberately emptied of whatever emotion he might have once had on the subject, “Love won.”
Or maybe he was just tired of being asked about it.
Love always won in the end. No matter how it happened, no matter what it took, no matter what it meant. Fair or not, true or not, love won.
If it was a conspiracy, at least it was the best of its kind in the world.
Bingo
“I’m three away across,” said Ali, “three away up-down two different ways, and two away diagonal.”
“I’m four away up-down four different ways,” said Lisa.
“ ‘Four away’ isn’t a thing,” said Brian.
“Yes it is,” said Lisa.
“I-29,” said the announcer.
“Three away!” reported Lisa.
“That just makes you normal with us,” said Brian.
“N-44.”
“Three away two different ways!” said Lisa.
“Three away vertical two ways,” said Danielle, the oldest cousin. “Three away across one way, two away across one way.”
“Two away diagonal one way, three away diagonal another way, two away vertical two ways,” said Brian.
“Just two more,” said Ali. “Two more, baby.”
“G-60.”
“One away!” yelled Brian and Ali simultaneously. “One away!” “One away!”
“Two away three different ways,” said Danielle.
The prize was one hundred dollars, which was a lot if it was 1996 and you were nine, eight, also eight, or eleven and a half years old. This was a hundred dollars that no one even knew existed before Danielle had discovered the sign on the resort’s recreation-room door that afternoon and then, in a second miracle, convinced her aunt and uncle that this was the kind of activity that looked like it might be fun for the whole extended family. A hundred dollars, before taxes had been invented and exactly two weeks before the school year was to begin, meant different things to each of them but everything to all of them.
“G-52,” said the announcer.
“One away!” said Danielle.
“One away two different ways, two away three different ways, three away a ton of ways,” said Ali.
“Two away two different ways,” said Lisa.
“One away one way, two away two ways!” said Brian.
“Wait!” said Ali. “The middle space is a free space? I’m one away three different ways!”
“B-35.”
“Bingo,” said their grandfather from the back.
Marie’s Stupid Boyfriend
No one didn’t play the guitar “on principle.” Either you can play the guitar, or you can’t.
You don’t “don’t.”
Remember him?
Pick a Lane
“Pick a lane!!!”
The driver behind me swerved to both sides of my car, leaning his head out the window to scream at me as he honked.
“PICK A LANE!!!”
Here was the thing: both lanes were identical. How was I supposed to decide?
“PICK A LANE!!!!!!”
They were both the exact same width and had the exact same smoothness to the pavement. And there was no one in either lane, either.
Except for me, half in both.