Looking Back (A List)
Looking Back: A List of Insignificant Things that Had a Monumental Impact on My Life
I recently found a cache of my old music collection, back when it was a fairly reasonable size. I let it play on shuffle for a while, and ran across a few songs I haven’t heard in several years. I know my tastes in music have changed dramatically (as they should refine with age, like a taste for wine or for comedy or for good writing), but I was surprised at how quickly I slipped back into an older mindset. So I let myself take a long trip down memory lane, pulling out a few songs here and there relating to specific memories in my life. It’s funny how something as simple as a song can bring you back somewhere so quickly.
I’ve run across articles or films or albums that talk about places I’ve been or things I’ve done. The NYTimes had a piece about the International Thespian Society I once worked so hard to attend. Of course, I haven’t been in four years, but my memories were so fresh and so vivid, I found it difficult to believe the event and the culture continued without me and has now heralded in a different generation of theatre geeks singing different songs and wearing different hairstyles.
With each such recollection, I play it like a moviola reel until the film runs out and I remember that it’s not a world I’m part of any longer. But the celluloid has left an image in my mind and I’m homesick enough to continue down memoir blouvard. Along my journey, peering into driveways as I travelled farther and farther back into my past, I came across a few memories that stood out. Although I didn’t realise it then, I can, with the wisdom of hindsight, pinpoint some life-defining moments I’ve had. I thought I’d share a few of them with you, in a list that only scratches the surface and motivates me to write a memoir one day. Here are a few of the gems, for your enjoyment:
Tiger 2-XL
For those of you who aren’t up on your geeky computer toys from the ’90s, 2-XL was a talking robot with four buttons that was more or less a trivia games using 8-track tapes. It would ask you multiple choice or true/false questions like “How many tiny creatures are living on your body?” or “Is a centimetre larger than an inch?” and as a reward for getting questions right, you’d get another piece of trivia. The appeal is not immediately apparent, as any kid who would voluntarily take a test in his or her spare time is clearly not the most popular on the playground, but it wasn’t just the premise of good ol’ 2-XL that did it for me. I saw the 2-XL commercialon television at one point or another, and was irrevocability drawn to the idea that, like the kid in the video, one who knew a lot of useless information, could somehow disband a pack of seven older, stronger, cooler guys. Not only did I play with 2-XL until its voice became dark and menacing due to the decay of my robot’s inner workings, but I took from this unusual holiday gift the belief that knowledge is fundamentally the key to not getting my ass kicked at school. While I still remember more strange trivia than anyone else I know, this weapon of brainpower is also going to keep my salary’s ass from getting kicked as well.
Pink Starburst
By far the most superior of all Starburst flavours, pink (or strawberry) Starburst were highly coveted among yesteryear’s youth. One particular Halloween, Starburst were the “it” candy, and after amassing more Starburst than I could have possibly eaten, I carefully traded all of my other sweets for all of my sister’s pink Starburst. It was here my tendency as a hoarder rather than a spender was first apparent, but it was also here that I first learned the dangers of saving too much. Now, with my plastic bag filled with only my favourite candy, I was the happiest kid on earth. I know what you’re thinking. You ate them all and got sick! You grew tired of pink Starburst! But neither is the case. In fact, just the opposite. I didn’t eat a single one. I saved those Starburst for later, knowing that one day I would crack open that bag and dance in my strawberry Starburst delight. When that perfect day came along, I tore open the plastic bag, ripped the wrapper off the first tiny square of sticky deliciousness and bit down. I nearly broke my teeth. Starburst, which are supposed to be soft and chewy, inevitably go rock hard with age. I had waited so long to savour my strawberry Starburst that I had rendered the entire bag inedible. In retrospect, it was really a difficult lesson for a child so young to learn (I don’t think I even had full days of school yet) but one that I still take with me to this day. If you’re going to trade all your chocolate for Starburst, at least enjoy the Starburst.
Switzerland
More specifically Silvaplana, Switzerland. My immediate family went on a trip to Europe before I went to high school, a very meaningful trip for us all. The site of my parents’ honeymoon, it was also the first time either me or my sister had travelled internationally, the first time I ever saw the world was bigger than my backyard, the first time I was on a train, and the first time I ever realised my parents were people too, not just parents. I learned so much on that trip; my eyes were wide open every step of the way. This beautiful town in the Swiss Alps gave birth to the moment I decided I needed to travel, that I didn’t want to stay in the U.S. But the most defining moment of the trip was something much more casual. It was the Swiss national holiday, and there were going to be 3-course meals at every restaurant and fireworks in the evening. It was summer, but there was still snow on the mountain, and I was terribly excited for the street faire I could see forming from our upper story deck. And my father, halfway through eating a loaf of bread, said, “Switzerland is just as pretty as some parts of Colorado. This is just like the fourth of July there.” I don’t even know if I was into the double-digits age wise then, but I had been to Colorado, and suddenly I saw he was right. I’m not saying Switzerland is the same as Colorado, but I knew what my dad meant. There is beauty everywhere in the world, and you have to appreciate places for what they are. But at the same time, don’t come to Switzerland because it’s supposed to be beautiful, and expensive, and extravagant. Come to Switzerland to see Switzerland. Go to Colorado to see Colorado. I have adopted that philosophy through every country’s soil I’ve set foot on since.
Blue October’s “Calling You”
We all have our days. And some of us our lucky enough to have our heroes too, our knights in shining armour that stroll up to the castle and fight off our bad days tooth and nail without hearing a request to. I remember one evening I declined an invitation to go out with friends on one such day. My three knights in armour didn’t remark on it, or ask why, or do anything other than ride up to my house in a beat up Honda, stand in my driveway, and loudly belt out the lyrics to Blue October’s “Calling You” in its entirety just to make me feel better. It worked. And while the song itself doesn’t hold any special meaning for me, just hearing a single lyric from the bard reminds me that I have extraordinary friends in this world who are willing to go to extraordinary lengths just to get me to smile. In a way, they have spoilt me by proving that true friends who truly understand me do exist, and will pull a U-turn on the freeway to serenade your bad days away. How lucky I am to have more than one such hero.
My Grandmother’s Garage
Grandparents have always been a marvelous species who properly spoil their grandchildren and in my case, tell the best bedtime stories and make the best vegetable soup and let you swim in the pool until you get pruney all over. I was one of those kids lucky enough to have one of my grandmothers live right down the street from me, well within the distance of a reasonable eight-year-old bike ride. While some of the best grandmother memories are usually confined to the average persons dim-at-best childhood memories, my grandmother’s crowning moments didn’t begin until I was in secondary school. My junior and senior year of high school, my friends and I had it in our minds that we’d start a band. So, my closest chum and I split the cost of a drum set and began our quest for two other willing musicians. The musicians were easy enough to find, and the cover songs easy enough to agree on, but finding a practice location was a different matter. My grandmother came to the rescue, not only allowing us to practice twice a week in her garage well into the summer, but providing cold beverages, delicious after school snacks, and towels should we decide to once again let our skin get wrinkled and pruney in the pool after rehearsal. In many ways that garage and the generosity of that grandmother made many of my dreams come true, and I will not hesitate to thank her profusely for her kindness, and, on behalf of my now-defunct band members, for being a surrogate grandmother to silly school children in good need of some fantasy and butter creams.
“Yesterday” by The Beatles
On another musical note, I have to place a distinct memory of my seventh-grade biology teacher sitting next to my sixth-grade math teacher (incidentally two of my all-time favourite teachers) parked on a picnic table in Big Bend National Park, strumming some chords and singing some notes that resulted in ultimately playing “Yesterday.” Now, I can’t say I’ve ever been a particular fan of the Beatles, but everyone seems to start guitar lessons by learning their songs (usually “Blackbird” is the first) while everyone seems to think their mastery is the mark of guitar success (usually “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is the last). Although not part of this school of thought, it was nonetheless this passing Beatles song that convinced me I could pick up the instrument and experience a moderate level of success. I had found my mothers old Alvarez C-Neck in the garage and claimed it for myself. She had played a song or two for me from her own high school band days and I was blown away. Never could this musical magic be mine on my own, no matter how many times I read the chord book or studied “Killing Me Softly,” the only sheet music we owned. But then, I saw Mr. Elliott and Mr. Easton making their own magic on their own magic wands. Noticing my stares intent on their fretting hands, both teachers admitting to being self-taught, and from then on I decided I too could acquire this self-taught voodoo. “Yesterday” was the song I first started with because it was the song they first started with, and now that I know it by heart, I will probably never play it again.
Gừng
Gừng means “ginger” in Vietnamese. Or, if mispronounced, can also mean ginger, root, husband, and a number of other, completely different words. This I was taught by my eighth-grade World History I teacher, Ms. Trahn. At the time, hearing an eastern language was news to me, in fact, I don’t think I had ever before even heard of countries like India or China, much less Vietnam or Laos. The idea that intonation could change the meaning of words seemed such a powerful notion that I immediately began to notice the subtle and subconscious differences in human intonation and speech patterns (which perhaps explains my love of irony). Although I learned an incredible amount from that course in the way of world history (and indeed cultural awareness) and made a life friend and fellow easter-philosophy buddy, the only specific memory I have from that class is the lesson on how to properly pronounce gừng. It is this memory that impressed upon me the need for impeccable oral delivery, leading me to a successful run in the disciplines of debate, oratory, foreign languages, and, as it were, sarcasm.
And there are of course more. There is the pair of robotic toy dogs (the brown one of which my sister claimed and I then decided to sabotage with a marble), the time Greg Bahm and I wrote our own newspaper and delivered it to the neighbourhood, the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System), and a brief period where I pretended to like Hamsters to remain close friends with Josh Lavine and Jeremy Cohen. There’s a holiday where I mistook a bookmark for a piece of candy and a doll I refused to ever give up, and my staunch dislike of pencils that earned me a reputation in the physics department I to this day do not live down, and the best teacher/mentor/friend who led me to everything I know and love.
But they are just windows among the many houses lining my path back home. After I’ve been driving long enough to get low on petrol, the lawns and front porches get fuzzier and blurrier and I have difficult keeping the memories accurate. Part of me honestly believes that these memories have something important to teach me; that’s why they’re still around. I’ve been afraid to lose them, so here I share them with you to preserve them, and to let you in on something about my life that makes me who I am today. So concludes the list of insignificant things that profoundly influenced my life. What are yours?