The Great Whatever

The Great Whatever is the deliberately unfinished promise attached to Brendan Fletcher’s departure for college. For Eve Fletcher, the transition is a chance to frame their separate new lives as a hopeful adventure; at Orientation Week, Brendan repeats that optimism to an adviser who answers by calling him an optimist and asking what he actually wants from college. The phrase holds both confidence and uncertainty without resolving either.

A Promise Made at Home

The idea first takes shape in Eve Fletcher’s hopes for Brendan’s departure. On the morning he is due to leave, she wants to tell him how much love, gratitude, and pride have accumulated over the summer. Her imagined message joins the past to the future: she is proud both of the little boy he was and of the decent man she believes he will become. She also wants to assure him that his departure is not the beginning of an adventure for him alone; she, too, will start a new life. In her mind, the separation can therefore be named as shared possibility rather than simply loss.

That intended conversation never takes place. Brendan Fletcher oversleeps after a night of partying, is too hungover to help with packing, and leaves Eve Fletcher to carry his boxes and suitcases down the stairs despite her bad back. She suppresses her irritation because she does not want their last morning together to end in nagging. The gap between her carefully held hopes and the practical strain of the departure gives the promise its first qualification: the new beginning is emotionally meaningful to her, but it does not unfold according to the scene she had imagined.

After loading the van, Eve Fletcher posts a photograph and an announcement for her 221 Facebook friends. The van contains the ordinary particulars of Brendan Fletcher’s move—luggage and plastic containers, a rolled rug, a lacrosse stick, an Xbox, a fan, a mini-fridge, emergency food, and his favorite Doritos. Her public message turns that cluttered, tiring departure into a bright declaration of happiness. The obligatory emoticon helps present the feeling she wants others to recognize, even though the day has left her crying on the drive home. The hopeful framing is genuine, but it is also a way of giving an unruly milestone a legible shape.

The Adviser’s Unfinished Sentence

The phrase returns in a different register when Brendan Fletcher meets Devin Torborg, his academic adviser from the Anthropology Department, during Orientation Week. Brendan has mistakenly called him “Professor”; Torborg explains that he is technically an instructor, not on the tenure track, and says he prefers to be called Devin. His tired appearance and small, weary gestures contrast with the grand language of a college beginning: he massages his eyelids while looking through Brendan’s file, which contains a single sheet of academic information.

Torborg starts to describe college as “The beginning of a great . . .” but trails off, unable to supply the next word. Brendan provides “Adventure,” completing the familiar optimistic phrase for him. Torborg’s reply is brief: “Ah,” he says, “You’re an optimist.” The exchange makes the gap between the promise and its speaker visible. Brendan can supply the expected word, but Torborg does not confirm that college will in fact be an adventure; instead, he identifies the hopeful quality of Brendan’s answer.

An Open-Ended Beginning

The title The Beginning of a Great Whatever preserves the interruption rather than settling it. At home, Eve Fletcher imagines an adventure large enough to include both her son’s college life and her own new start. At the advising meeting, the sentence falters before Brendan fills its blank with “Adventure.” The title’s “Whatever” keeps that confident completion from becoming a guarantee: the destination is a beginning, while what follows remains unspecified.

This uncertainty is not the same as simple pessimism. Eve Fletcher’s hope is grounded in affection and pride, and Brendan Fletcher accepts the optimistic word readily enough to offer it himself. Yet the events around the phrase resist a perfectly composed inspirational story. The departure includes exhaustion, physical work, unspoken frustration, and a missed conversation; the first advising exchange ends not with a plan but with Torborg’s question about what Brendan wants from college. The concept therefore encompasses both a hoped-for future and the fact that neither parent nor adviser can name its outcome in advance.

What the Phrase Holds Together

The Great Whatever connects the two scenes through a shared act of naming. Eve Fletcher uses an imagined account of adventure to reassure Brendan Fletcher and herself as their lives change. Brendan, confronted with an adviser’s unfinished sentence, supplies the optimistic completion. In each case, the word offers a way to approach departure without pretending that its difficulties have disappeared.

Its significance lies in that balance between emotional certainty and practical openness. Eve Fletcher knows what she feels for her son, but she cannot make the last morning go as planned or deliver the words she had prepared. Brendan Fletcher can call college an adventure, but the meeting leaves his aims unanswered. The phrase makes room for hope without defining the experience in advance: it is a beginning, and the “whatever” is precisely what remains to be lived.