“Rain is a very special blessing,” my mother says. Even when I was little, she’d already been saying it to my sister and me for as long as I could remember. Just as my grandmother had said it to her, when my mother was not my mother but only herself, in the dry Texas summers of her own childhood. Eons ago and continents away, as children reckon these things.
Continue readingTag Archives: nostalgia
SECRET CRUSH
We’ve been cleaning out our old storage unit lately, which means I’ve been rediscovering a lot of memorabilia and souvenirs (and baby clothes, and broken toys, and expired toiletries, and homework assignments from 20 years ago, and literal garbage…)
As you can imagine, there have been a few nostalgia bombs.
One of the treasures I uncovered is from high school, when I had a positively brobdingnagian crush that I was too much of a weenie to do anything about. For some reason, it was very important to me that no one ever find out who my SECRET CRUSH was–or, indeed, that I had a SECRET CRUSH at all. I wouldn’t even write their name down!
Well, except for one time. You see, I had this idea that since I couldn’t talk to them (I mean literally: I had trouble saying a single word to them even though we had all the same friends), I would confess my feelings in a letter.
Now, if you’re thinking that I wrote my SECRET CRUSH a mash note with the intent of doing something normal like, I don’t know, giving it to them–well, you better buckle up, ’cause the weenie train hasn’t even left the station.
Actually giving my crush the letter? Way too scary. I just thought it would be nice to have it written out, so I would know what I would write if I was brave enough. So I wrote the letter and then just kept it in my journal…right?
Ha!
You see, the thought of actually writing the letter I would hypothetically give to my crush if I was brave enough…was still too scary. So instead, I drew a sketch of the letter.
That’s right, folks: I drew a picture of a hypothetical love letter. It’s now hypothetical twice.
(Hold your applause, please: we’re just coming to the best part!)
What did the letter say, you ask? BEHOLD:
I…I can’t, you guys. I’m dying. This is so sad it’s hilarious. I drew a sketch of the hypothetical love letter I would write if I was brave enough to write the letter I would hypothetically give to my crush if I was brave enough to give it to them, and in that sketch…the letter’s blank. I couldn’t even imagine imagining what I would imagine saying to them!
Well, okay, it wasn’t entirely blank: I did put their name on it. I was brave enough to do that much, at least!
…I just had to then immediately tear the page out of my journal, fold it up, put it in a SECRET box, and stash the SECRET box in a SECRET hiding place in my room, so that no one would ever, ever find out about my SUPER SECRET CRUSH.
Especially my crush.
(We ended up married, by the way. I did get there eventually!)
I Tweep for Humanity
- What a Tweerp
- While My Guitar Gently Tweeps
- That’s Twinge
Some of my favorite tweets weren’t my tweets at all, they were conversations between me and my best friend. We were both on Google Buzz–I think we might have been the only ones–so we were able to comment on each other’s posts privately. Here’s a few of our briefer exchanges:
Me: “Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.” -Rod Serling
BFF: But the acoustics are amazing!
Me: So are the sets!
The casting is good too, but the scripts are usually just embarrassing.
Me: Naaails to the left, duct taaape to the right–here I am, stuck in the middle with gluuue~
BFF: You’re describing how I mounted my computer monitor to the wall
To this day I’m not 100% sure he was joking.
Me: If mathematics is the study of pure logic and abstraction, then philosophy is the mathematics of language.
BFF: ?
Me: Could you please be more specific
BFF: ??!
…I have no idea what I was saying, either.
BFF: Anytime I say anything worth quoting, you should attribute it to Mark Twain instead.
Me: -Mark Twain
Like any good hacker, when Mr. Twain learns a new system his first instinct is to try to break it. Sometimes I call him the “anti-mnemonic” because this instinct kicks in without fail any time I’m trying to remember something (No, no, no, it’s “righty light-y, lefty heft-y!”), but he’s expressed the urge in other contexts, too. Such as, for example, lame jokes on Twitter:
Me: I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, there isn’t really any bad news.
BFF: …the bad news is, I was lying about there not really being any bad news.
The other bad news is, I’ve got one more for you. Don’t worry, I’ve saved the most self-indulgent best for last, complete with commentary:
Guess what? Chicken butt.
Ah yes, a classic. But wait, it gets “better!”
Guess why? Chicken pie.
Uh oh. I sense sleep deprivation…
Guess when? Chicken pen.
All right, I think we get it now.
Guess where? Chicken hair.
*sigh*
Guess who? Chicken poo.
I’m surprised I held out that long before resorting to poop, honestly.
Me: Guess how? Chicken cow.
BFF: You are such a menace on Twitter!
-Mark Twain
Further Tweminiscing
Yesterday was my birthday! To celebrate, I’m going to take a break from all this boring old fiction and get back to something more self-indulgent exciting: tweets I wrote 15 years ago!
A lot of my old tweets were reposts of other people’s blogs, articles, and essays, or sometimes even just quotes. This one is special because the person I’m quoting is my dad:
“Home is where people get your jokes.” -Dan McCrimmon
Love you, dad ❤️
Some of my tweets reminded me of moments and ideas I’d nearly forgotten. Usually this was a good thing.
Watching an…interesting movie called “Tank Girl.” Confused, but in a good way. This must be how dogs feel.
Tank Girl is a cult classic, one of the earlier comic books to be adapted to film. Recommended. I still think “confused, but in a good way” probably is how dogs feel, but after I got stoned for the first time I decided that was a better approximation. (Watching Tank Girl while stoned would be like how dogs feel on the 4th of July.)
Some reminders were more mixed.
Last night I sewed a ripped seam in my pajamas; it was the most accomplished I’ve felt all semester. Why am I in school, again?
Honestly, sometimes I still feel like this is among my top ten achievements in life.
Re-reading papers I wrote in high school. Man, the old me was so awesome. What the hell happened?
Yeah…college did things to me.
Then there were the reminders of things that haven’t changed at all.
Times change, but people remain insane.
Sometimes the insanity is more…prominent…than others.
“Where is my watch?” *searches* “Hmm, that’s odd, I can’t find it any–oh. It’s on my wrist.” #22andgoingsenile
Still just as senile at 37. That’s…good? That’s a good thing, right?
Oh yeah, I was gonna eat dinner at some point. #oops
Oops.
Younger Me Was A Twiit
I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately–y’know, catalouging all my life’s deepest regrets, just your ordinary early-onset midlife crisis–and I ended up going through some of my old Tweets. Here are a few gems I thought were embarrassing enough to be worth sharing.
I posted this sequence while reading Harry Potter #7 for the first time:
Neville Longbottom is a f***ing badass.
If I were a girl, I would be crushing on Neville Longbottom.
Look at your man. Now look at me. Now back at your man, now back at me, now…back at your man. Sadly, your man is not Neville Longbottom.
He is totally pimp, is what I am saying.
I’m particularly amused that I wrote “if I were a girl” instead of “if I were gay.” In retrospect, I probably should have noticed something odd about that.
Here’s another one on a similar theme:
I’m perfectly comfortable with my heterosexuality, but if A**** Diaz ever came up to me and said “Will you marry me?” I would be like “HELL YES WHEN CAN I START”
This one is doubly funny because not only did the artist in question turn out to be a super hot girl, I also ended up marrying a guy.
Here’s a couple about sleep deprivation:
Today’s word of the day is: FARTCHKNACKER
(I didn’t get much sleep.)
That’s an understatement. Here’s another:
Dreamed I stayed up till 4 doing reading for class. Didn’t actually stay up till 4, but now I feel like I did and my reading still isn’t done.
I think that between them, those two tweets sum up the majority of my college experience.
Here’s an attempt I made at a 140-character poem, just after shaving my head for the first time:
Commit! the imagined is strongest becoming real. Unrequited acts are ghosts of shadows: a memory of warmth beside the moment before sunrise.
It’s not a great poem, but it’s a sentiment I could stand to be reminded of more often.
One more for now. I wrote this one while working a part-time construction gig over the summer:
Boy, I just love using my caulk to plug holes.
Sorry, that one’s still funny.
In Search of Secrets 