As a college sophomore I interned in the advertising department at the Boston Globe. Several times a week I signed a minivan out of the motor pool and drove downtown to pick up or drop off various publishing-related materials—page proofs, contact sheets, Baldini’s pizza, etc. More often, though, another intern and I took turns using the minivan as a morning or afternoon shuttle between the paper’s Morrissey Boulevard headquarters and JFK/Umass on the Red Line.

Ironically—truly so—he and I never benefitted from being shuttled as passengers. Say it was my turn on Monday morning and it was his that afternoon: I would arrive early via subway, walk under the goddamn Southeast Expressway to the Globe and pick up the van, then shuttle folks for an hour or so; with a later shift, he arrived after I was done driving and, too, had to walk under the goddamn Southeast Expressway. Conversely, in the afternoon, my day ended before his return-trip duties started and his ended after returning the van to the garage, which meant we both walked under the goddamn Southeast Expressway again. A major flaw in the system, if you ask me, but it looked alright on a résumé.

The Globe in the nineties had its share of in-house celebrities, mainly from the sports department. You’d see them around—Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullen, Mike Barnicle. One afternoon I’m parked outside the lobby, awaiting another batch of nascent Love Battery enthusiasts, and who but Thee Dan Shaughnessy emerges. He sticks his head in the open window and, doing his best Shaughnessy impression, asks “Hey, uh, can you give my friend a ride?” Charming, humble and the envy of bitter regional media critics for decades because he thought up “the curse of the Bambino” before they did. Say what you will about his supposed “critical nature”—I certainly have, and it’s taken me years to recognize how backward I had it—but I’ll debate Kim Deal vs. Black Francis with him anytime.

Should you have encountered Bob Ryan in the hallway, though, that motherfucker wouldn’t even look at you. He can eat shit.