Ben

 

Oct 2030

Ben Green is 82; Florence Green is 57; Whitney Green is 14

Danni Bertino is 21; Darrel Killian is 14

It was fall again. Time to pull out the warmer clothes and prepare the garden for winter. Ben had never been the poetic type, but he still couldn't help but muse on the symbolism of this time of year. 

The autumn of your life and all that, a time to settle in and enjoy... well, if not a decline in activity, then certainly not an increase. At 82, most people would probably put Ben in that category. Hell, he'd put himself in it at one point, years before now. But ever since, he'd never been able to 'settle down' because life kept throwing new things at him.

He'd thought his future was settled when his first wife, Marisa, had died relatively young. They'd planned out their happy retirement but it was not to be, and Ben was resolved to quiet old age spending time with his two adult sons and their children. 

Then he'd met Florence.

She was some years younger than him, but it didn't seem to matter, perhaps because she'd spent most of her lives around older people. She was an only child born to older parents, and as an adult she'd cared for them in their old age, living her whole life in the same little cottage she'd grown up in and continuing to run their flower shop, even after they were gone.

Ben was wealthy but, when they'd married, he'd left his big house in Richmond and moved into the cottage Florence loved so much. 

Much to Ben's dismay, the cottage was largely unchanged from the way it had been when Florence was a child - including all the appliances and the like. 

Florence and her parents had lived comfortably on the earnings from the shop, but there wasn't a lot left over. Her parents were very careful with their money, repairing things rather than replacing them and overall not spending a cent they didn't need to. Florence had adopted the same philosophy. Ben, a successful athlete then businessman, had become wealthy before he was 30. He didn't like waste either, but he did believe in comfort and convenience.

He'd started with a new stove, using the excuse that he loved to cook so he would be the one using it the most. He wanted something a bit closer to what he was used to.

Then a new fridge, one that couldn't be heard humming and groaning throughout the whole house. And a TV that actually got all the channels that were available.

The dishwasher was a bit harder. When it stopped working, Florence was convinced she could fix it herself. It was only after a minor but startling electric shock that she gave in.

Ben had another reason to want to upgrade as much as he could in their home - he was in good health but he wasn't going to be around forever. Although Florence would inherit the largest share of his fortune, he couldn't imagine her actually wanting to spend anything. Certainly not on her own comfort. He wanted to fit out her home in new, high quality things that would hopefully last her out.

After they had married, Ben had planned out his retirement again. They'd travel while he still could, and he would show Florence a bit of the world. Later, when that wasn't an option any more, they'd enjoy the garden and the village. But again, things didn't work out the way he had anticipated.

Marriage had awakened Florence's long-suppressed desire to be a mother. She was past the age where pregnancy was an option, so after some debate they had fostered Whitney. 

Fostering had led to adoption, Florence had sold the flower shop to become a full time parent, and Ben had adapted to being a father once again, in his 70s.

Whitney was a young teenager now. Like most kids her age, she filled her time with friends and activities, and needed far less from her parents. 

Parenting a teenager wasn't always easy.

As much as they missed Whitney's childhood, there were some advantages to her greater independence. They had more time just to enjoy together...

... and even to be a bit childish themselves...

... or not...

Florence was working again, only a few hours a week, putting together flower arrangements for the current owner of the shop she had once owned. With three of them in the little cottage there very little space for her to work, so they converted the shed in the back yard into a workroom.

Along with the flower arranging, she enjoyed spending most of her free time in her garden.

Just when things felt settled again, there had been more surprises to deal with. Ben's family had, unexpectedly, grown over the past couple of years. He had two granddaughters now. 

Technically, he'd had one of them for the past 20 years or so, he just never knew it. Nor did the girl's father, his son Jamie. She'd been raised in a loving adoptive home, but was still curious enough about her origins to seek out information on her biological parents - Jamie and his now-wife Elle.  Elle had become pregnant some time before she and Jamie had married, and had never told him about it.

The girl, Danni, currently lived just a short drive away in the dorms at SSU. She had the look of Ben's first wife, Marisa, and that was the thing that annoyed him the most about the whole situation - Marisa had been alive when Danni was born, and she would have loved to have a granddaughter. Elle hadn't allowed her that chance. 

Ben tried to tell himself that it hadn't been his or Marisa's decision to make. At least he knew about Danni now, and he wanted to make the most of whatever time he had to get to know her. So he pushed aside any bad feelings, and focused on making her feel welcome in his home.

There was another, far smaller addition to their family. Whitney had been feeding a stray dog that kept coming into their yard. She'd named him Dusty because he was covered in dirt the first time she'd seen him. By the time she'd managed to coax him into the house, it was clear to all of them that Dusty would be staying.

Which wasn't really a bad thing. Ben had owned dogs most of his life, he'd just never replaced the one that had passed shortly after he met Florence. If Whitney was happy to take responsibility for feeding and walking this one, Ben was happy to have him in the family.

Florence had never had a dog, but it wasn't hard to convince her of the benefits too.

That autumn, Whitney had her first formal school dance. They took photos before she left.

Ben and Florence ended up spending the evening out too, trying to distract themselves from the fact that their little girl had somehow aged five years in one day.

They weren't going to be able to forget that Whitney was growing up quite so easily, though. The next morning at breakfast, she couldn't stop talking about the dance. It had eventually emerged that she'd met a boy... well, not really met him, as Darrel had been in her class for the past year or so... but this was the first time she'd really noticed him.

"Invite him over for dinner," Ben said. "We'd like to meet him."

"Invite him over to meet you?" Whitney said. "That's so old fashioned!"

"And I'm old," said Ben. "Tuesday would be good."

---

Tuesday...

They spent the rest of the visit playing with Dusty...

... and doing their homework together...

This was a good thing, Ben told himself. Whitney needed to learn to manage without him, just like Florence. He wasn't going to be around forever.

Just because he'd always been the one to help her with her homework... 

Later that evening, after Darrel had gone home, Whitney was going over her work. 

It wasn't a particularly hard swear, but it was enough to get their attention.

"Hey, language!" said Florence.

"What's wrong?" Ben asked.

"This is!" said Whitney, gesturing to his workbook. "It's all wrong. I was listening to Darrel but I don't think he even understood the question!"

"Didn't you even read the question yourself?" Florence asked.

"Can you fix it?" Ben asked quickly. Whatever had happened, he was fairly sure from the look on her face that she'd read it next time.

"I don't know! And its due tomorrow morning... "

And so Ben found himself back in his familiar spot...

There was plenty of time for Whitney to learn to manage without him. For now, it was just good to know that his little girl still needed him.

---

Background to Danni's story here. 

This is another family who never had an update in TS3 - they were actually the last household I ever played in TS2. I had to fit in the picture of TS3 child-Whitney since she never appeared in a post.

In case anyone is wondering, Ben will be around a bit longer. TS2 and TS3 handle elder lifespans slightly differently. In both games, there's a base number of days that every elder gets, then the days after that are determined by factors personal to the sim (happiness, fitness etc), plus an element of randomness. The difference is that in TS2, the amount of time the sim has left is determined on the day they age up to elder. You can look it up in SimPE, and I always did - I would give my sim a year for each day the game gave them.

In TS3, the sim has a chance of dying every day past their base elder days. It's re-rolled every night, with the chance of surviving becoming increasingly smaller as the sim nears the absolute maximum days (in my game, they age up at 70 and have base five more years. The absolute maximum is 101). So in future, my elders could die at any time, even if I have plans for them - a bit like r/l, really.

There are two exceptions to this - Ben and Brandi. They were both already elders when I switched to TS3, and I already knew how long TS2 had given them. I decided to stick with that, and I've turned off aging for them both so they won't go until the time that the previous game gave them.

Am I saying when that will be? Nope... lol... although I am going to make the most of the fact that these are the last two elders I can plan a story around leading up to the end.

If Ben and Florence wanted a distraction at the restaurant, they got one...

I'm using this mod but the waitress just kept standing around doing nothing, and this guy understandably got very angry at her. Meanwhile Andrew turned up with Aiden and I don't know if this is really a child-friendly restaurant. (I know Andrew is supposed to still be away at Basic Training but... outtakes!)

Oh Andrew, you take a toddler out late at night to a busy restaurant that doesn't serve anything remotely appealing to a small child... it was always going to end like this...