I’m Not Available to Save the Community Center

Look, I appreciate what you guys are doing, but I am not available to band together and save the community center. I love the community center—lotta good memories! It’s where I learned to dice an onion and swim a backstroke (separate summers, same teacher). The Center was my first job, the first little plastic thing I put on my key fob when I didn’t need to carry keys, all of it!

But ultimately I’m an adult now with a real job (audit accountant), and I just don’t have time to drop everything, unearth my Grandma’s legendary brownie recipe from Aunt Peg’s rickety old attic, and use bake sale proceeds to restore a neighborhood treasure to its former glory.

You gotta believe me—NO ONE appreciates the effort of a rag-tag group of neighborhood inhabitants setting aside squabbles to create something beautiful for a worthy cause like me. I watch Christmas with the Kranks every holiday season, Tim Allen stuff and all! But I really need to keep my weekends free in case my brother gets the jet skis or NYT Cooking puts out a really bomb 12-hour stew.

I know these are things I could theoretically put aside to unite disparate members of an enchanted town and embody the spirit of community resilience, but it’s just not in the cards for me this year.

If you guys have an itemized list of things that need to be done like rake the leaves or buy a couple games of Clue, I’m happy to throw down, but I can’t be the unlikely hero of an odds-defying effort to turn a neighborhood into a family.

Not to be that guy—but if this is all ’cause the roof is leaking, I think we’re solving a problem that doesn’t exist. A leaky roof! It’s so quaint, so much character! Unless we get explicit instructions that the community center roof is not up to code, I’m just not sure it’s worth the investment of time, self-exploration, and empathy that it’s gonna take for all of us to put aside our differences and put on the best damn talent show this town has ever seen. Even if we did (and I’d go!) how much would we need to charge per head to get the money together?

Probably more than people are willing to pay, I’m just saying.

I don’t like Mayor Sideburns either—it sucks that if we’re unable to save the community center he’s going to sell the land to a callous developer who’s been running the rat race so long he forgot the only race worth winning is one toward each other. Honestly, if they build condos they’ll probably also put in a cool artisan coffee place. You’re telling me you’d rather crochet in a leaky building than have a good breakfast burrito within walking distance?

I will happily GET my car washed if that’s something you want to organize but again—how many cars are we gonna need to wash to break even let alone fund a new roof? Probably a ton, right? We’d need to go to neighboring towns. Again I don’t want to discourage any of you but a carwash is really hard to scale, and my Saturday mornings are locked in right now: get up, fresh OJ, walk the dog around the block (not a burrito in sight) come home, start a laundry, prep some chicken, watch last night’s NBA highlights. So you see how working five consecutive weeks at a car wash is tough to fit that in, even if it does connect me with parts of myself my single life has allowed me to ignore at the expense of connection to friends and neighbors.

Now listen, if a wealthy former citizen returns to the town to make amends with his adolescence, writes us a check in the exact amount needed, shakes my hand and says, “We need each other more than money. Thanks for showing me that,” I’m not gonna rip up the check! I’ll take the check and hand it right over! But I really can’t go caroling and commit to something bigger than myself—I’ve really been trying to go to bed earlier, and if I stay out late even one night it kind of throws me for like several days, so I need to kind of honor that.

Really thanks for coming over, but it’s a no. I get that being reasonably handsome and coming back to this town after five years trying to make it in the big city makes me the ideal member of the community to help us see what truly matters, but I’m not your guy.

Like I said, I will be the first in line to get my car washed or SEE the talent show, but I can’t just cast my selfishness aside, look inward, and discover that the true community center is wherever we stand together.

My brother is home, though, wanna ask him?