“Within reach”

I am the proud recipient of a third-place New York Press Association Award for Best Humor column. Not too shabby.

It actually makes me feel surprisingly old, and serious. Suddenly the stakes are raised; I can’t think about this as a column I write for fun in my mother’s newspaper anymore. It is an award-winning humor column. That’s very weird to say.

I guess from now on I’ll try to be funnier. And get more serious. It’s time to start getting serious about being funny. Yeah. That’s my new plan.

I’m not off to a very a good start.

The fact that I chronicle my life in this column isn’t a surprise. It is all part of the natural progression of growing up in a newspaper office. As a child, I spent hours hanging out in my parents’ office. At the time, the office was on Main Street, in the last storefront before the bridge and I was much shorter, younger and more flexible. I rode a little red tricycle.

I rode that tricycle back and forth all day, from my mother’s desk in the front of the office through the kitchen to my father’s desk deep in the back room. I remember going to the hardware store with my mother to get a plastic wire cover for the cord that I was mangling by riding over it 20 times a day with my tricycle.

I would ride out the front door of the office and out onto the sidewalk. There was a small incline by what was then the Midtown Café. I remember struggling up the incline, spinning the trike around and coasting all the way back to the office, the wind sailing through my hair.

I’m usually looking for new ways to think about how time affects me. Am I getting better at this, worse? Are things going to get easier, harder?

I like to trace my life through my progress and achievements. I just moved into an office on the corner of Broome Street and Mott on the border of Chinatown. I didn’t know the area that well a week ago and now I know a variety of different places to get lunch; cheap, expensive, you name it. It’s an interesting thing to witness, change.

The newspaper and I have had a relationship for as long as I can remember. It’s changed drastically over the years as I’ve grown up.

I remember how strange it was to sit in my father’s office, still stale from cigarettes, with the image of him sitting with his feet crossed up on the desk fresh in my mind. What had always been my parents’ newspaper became my mother’s newspaper. My dad took a job as the news anchor on WVOS, the desk was cleaned off and the papers stowed away.

His lit cigarette disappeared out of the smoldering ashtray into dust particles lit up by a crack in the window shade.

I breathed the dust into my lungs, and stared at the empty wall where his awards used to hang. The rest of the awards still hung in the front office. I knew them well. I watched them grow in numbers over the years.

The mismatched frames didn’t stop them from being coveted by all and hung on the wall with great care and precision. After all, they were the Oscars of the newspaper world.

Along the adjacent wall hung all of the first-place plaques. I remember looking at them in awe. They were wooden, and slightly smaller than the printed ones. They had gold medal engravings on them. They said “First Place,” the category and the year. They had a large metal piece shaped like the state of New York.

Staring up at the plaques, I imagined that New York was a guy sitting at his desk. His face in profile as he leans back, Long Island stretching out like an uncomfortable foot.

The first-place plaques were hung very high and were always out of reach. But now it seemed possible that someday I would be able to stretch out and grab one of my very own.

I’m not sure if the awards are getting lower or if I’m getting taller.

But I have my suspicions.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier