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To my future children: I used to own this. Not this exact Trapper Keeper, but this exact design. The title of this Trapper Keeper is “Designer Space”. This is ironic, because this is supremely ugly. Yes, your father used to have amazing taste.
Recently, I was waiting in our dental school reception area to meet with Patient Financing and I opened up the February New Yorker. In it was a brilliant essay about the intersection of society and alcohol by Malcolm Gladwell, entitled Drinking Games. Gladwell’s anecdotal and anthropological evidence reveals that the effects of alcohol are not uniform — our reaction to being drunk is heavily influenced by… what we are expected to do when drunk. Here’s an awesome quote:
I wrote this meditation on attitude nearly seven years ago. Reading past the grammatical errors, attempts at grandiose style, and overwrought imagery, I think there’s some nascent wisdom.
Maybe.
Regardless, right now I’m listening to the Norah Jones song I referenced in there. It’s like stepping back in time to my Cretin Hall dorm room. Seems like another lifetime. Seven years ago.
You know what? Stuff used to be cooler.
Taken like a spoonful of Nyquil just before you pass out from flu exhaustion, nostalgia is no harm at all. In fact, it’s positively uplifting, even if that lift up hampers your hipness standing to the point where you might as well be culturally asleep. Short trips to what was probably an imaginary past— immaculate family gatherings around the tree, perfect junior high summers with perfect junior high kisses— aren’t necessarily grounds for an inner guilt trip.
I went home for fall break a couple of weekends ago, and while I was studying for my cell biology at my old desk, I opened up the file drawer on it. In it, I have a hanging folder folder marked “sentimental” in which I have an entire scrapbook worth of old scraps of paper I saved from high school and junior high. I’ve got band concert programs, my valedictorian speech, the brochure I received at the Sears Tower during my junior high trip to Chicago, and so much more. It’s grounding to occasionally return to these scraps. I know times were “tough” in their own way during the years I gathered these scraps, but the human power of retaining the good and forgetting the bad charges this eclectic stash with sentimental value.
Gumby theme - Katy found the Gumby theme. Just how I remember it!
Just as I am waxing philosophical about the past, one of youth’s role models goes and dies. Nothing tells you you are getting older like people from your generation dying. But I say this with tongue in cheek - I do not really put the “facing aging” thing in front of a life lost. I do not know what exactly Kirby Puckett did in his later life (there were some scandals), nor do I care all that much. I do, however, remember being a little kid, new to sports (unlike many boys my age), suddenly finding a touchstone to talk with people about: “He climbed that plexiglass!” I, of course, refer to the unbelievable (and now classic) footage of Puckett chasing down a fly ball and leaping to a seemingly impossbile height to snatch the dang thing out of the air. Wikipedia (personally, I welcome our new referential overloads):
Well, it’s been one heck of a ride this year, folks. The site received a complete overhaul, a long-anticipated digital picture section, and recently some ads to test out a new revenue stream. No, I don’t anticipate tumbledry “selling out” in the near future - we don’t get enough traffic to do that. But running a website still costs money, and we aim to offset that wherever possible. This year I blew up my first stuff in summer chemistry lab (the glass top of a sep funnel), drank my first cup of coffee (black), ran my first almost-sub 20 minute 5k (20:08 i think), had my first weird knee injury (still have to get that looked at), saw my first cross-dresser in person (at Whole Foods), got my first iPod (thanks, everyone!), grew my hair out long for the first time (it was curly), ate my first crab (less than 24 hours old, shipped chilled), and dissected my first cat (more fun than I would have thought).
Our home tree, bought right after we moved in … in late December of 1990. It is holding up well after all these years.
Ghost Writer - Who remembers this from when they were growing up? It could not have been that good … but memories, people.
The “here and now” is currently overwhelming. My projects include repairing my 838, catching up in Calc III, attending offices and the dental convention for the pre-dental co-op, finding time to return the multimeter that Professor Mowry so generously loaned me, finding new weight gloves, finalizing my school schedule for next year and this summer, polishing this catchy new piano riff, supporting Katy in her search for an apartment (she’s going to the U — yay for my sister being a graduate math student!), photographing South Campus for Katy’s memories, finding new lifting shirts, finding a summer job/internship, keeping my room clean, sleeping, and ending world hunger.
