Today, during the quiet of the morning and before most of my coworkers arrived at work, I sent off my last car payment to CarMax Auto Finance. I wrote out the last check after messing up and voiding one–a good thing, because my final payoff amount was lower than what I’d originally written in the little box on that particular check–sealed it inside a smaller envelope, affixed a stamp, and then skipped out to the mailbox in the front of our office complex.
Archive for the ‘memories’ Category
People often call me a nerd for liking video games so much. There’s also frequently that whole argument that my playing games is a waste of time and that I should devote myself to other wholesome activities.
I disagree. I believe that games are part of the human experience. Just ask one of my English professors, who actually had a course on human beings and the influence/necessity of play, which is really what games are. I think they’re great as a form of escapism, which is what I’m really about.
And there are many that have been not only entertainment, but also as influence on the way my brain thinks and solves puzzles. I’ve been introduced to great music, and have been encouraged to imagine many things beyond what I might have been able to do alone. Or even though a book! Who says video games are a waste of time? Hah.
Anyway, I got the idea for this post from a friend who plays a lot of games and who had to write a paper about all the games he’s ever played, including make-believe games and physical games (four square, anyone?). I’ve left those out, because I was more interested in the video games part of it. So below is a fairly comprehensive list of all the video games I can remember playing along with some brief descriptions/commentary, starting from the earliest ones. I hope you enjoy it!
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Divided into highs and lows.
I.
I don’t mind being dirty, but feeling my sinuses begin to run and my hands begin to crack from the cold is the worst feeling, even worse than the hard, freezing asphalt wearing on the knees of my jeans, worse than the sweat beginning to soak into my first layer of shirts. So much for not needing a shower this morning, I think, in between clambering around on the ground and rubbing more grease into my pants and coat.
It’s what has to be done though, and I’m just hoping and praying that it’s the last little streak of bad luck during the final week of this year. Why is this happening now? Why? I try not to think about this as I get the old tire off and jack the car up a little higher to accommodate the new one.
If it were warmer, I might have been able to change the tire in under half an hour. As it is, the tools have been sitting in my trunk out in the open for a week, the cold cuts through my hands and makes it hard to grip things, and so it takes me longer, about forty-five minutes, with the wind whipping the hair into my face, grease creeping further under my fingernails, and me hefting tires in and out of my trunk.
Still, I suppose it makes me feel empowered. I am on the road to work–albeit dirty, tired, and disgruntled–by ten o’clock, having taken care of something most people would just get upset and call a tow truck for. It’s the small victories, after all, that makes life what it is.
II.
I’m already strapped into the airplane, the belt loosely across my waist because I don’t like to feel it pinching too much. After wedging my bag under the seat (it barely fits), I’ve opened my crumpled McDonald’s bag and am unwrapping my last egg McMuffin sandwich to enjoy during the beginning part of my return home. I take the second delicious-but-so-bad-for-you bite and see a shadow fall over the light above me and my two seat mates.
“Excuse me,” the flight attendant says. “I need 16C to de-plane. Are you 16C?” She says this to the gentleman who was in my seat when my cousin and I finally boarded. I’d been ready to sit in the aisle the entire flight, always keeping my limbs tucked in and my head rigidly upright in the middle of the seat so as not to violate the personal space of the woman to my left, but having found someone already in the aisle seat, I simply contented myself with the one next to the window.
“That’s me,” I say, acknowledging her.
“Well we need that seat, and you need to de-plane,” the flight attendant says, rather tartly.
I know this is one of the hazards of flying standby, especially having been the second-to-last person called. Some jerk probably arrived monstrously late with a full fare ticket and was now demanding to be seated on this flight. Even though generally this is not supposed to happen, it does, and so I go without a fuss. After all, there is a flight out for the rest of the day every hour on the hour. I won’t be inconvenienced for long.
Walking a little awkwardly (and slightly shame-faced, although I’ve done nothing wrong) up the aisle of the plane, I am stopped by a different flight attendant who is upset that I just left.
“But you all told me to go,” I say to her, and the ground crew who has gathered on the breezeway backs up my story, even though she still regards me with suspicion.
At the gate again, the gate agent and I banter about who gets what priority.
“I’ve always wondered why sometimes my husband gets listed ahead of me, even though I’m higher priority,” she says, chuckling.
I suppose in situations like this, it has paid to be nice. She had even seemed surprised when the call came through that actually seat 14C was needed, or passenger Fie/J and not Abr/K or 16C, and I had waved her off and told her just to keep my cousin on the stupid plane since I was already out of my seat and standing there anyhow.
“I did beat my cousin at the check-in process,” I suggest, and she nods.
“That’s it,” she says, and then tells me I’m listed for the next flight. She smiles kindly and then leaves me to wait for the next half an hour to get home.
At least now there’s time to finish my last egg McMuffin.
III.
Blob’s Park in Jessup, Maryland, exists in two spots in my memory warehouse.
Its first location is set with the rest of the memories of my childhood, and it is this memory that I reference the most often. Really, my mental version of Blob’s Park is made from an aggregation of memories from all the times I had visited as a child. I see the stage looming up above my head, the dance floor stretching on for ages, the glittering disco ball rotating above us and sending spots of light here and there. I see the deer heads on the walls, the trophy sharks and fowl, the German flag hung like a banner in one corner. There are steins of beer and soda and always chips and pretzels over wax paper in red plastic baskets. Then I see me as a little girl, trying to step in time to my grandfather’s beat–polkas generally go in 3/4 time, waltzes in 4/4–trying not to step on his feet or stumble, although he holds on to both of my hands tightly in case I do.
The last memory is from high school, when we ran a race here. We did not go inside the dance hall, which I found ironic, but instead stayed outside. Kids around me wondered what the inside of the hall looked like and I tried to tell them, but how to convey the place without making it sound trite? It is just a dance hall, but to me it is more than that. Instead, we focus on the rolling hills behind the property, the smell of cow manure, the long, circuitous trail we have to run in a few hours. I think in the end this is my favorite course, because even in the beginning of the run I smell grass and sweat and dirt, three scents that bring me right back to every time I have ever run hard outside.
But we gather as a family here, and it’s the first time in a while that I’ve seen my grandfather smiling. We are there to celebrate the 60 years that they have been married.
“Frankly,” Grandma had said to me as we waited for our rides, “I didn’t think it would last this long!”
But it has lasted this long. The band is not particularly good, but polka is polka to most of us, and it doesn’t matter anyway. The cousins and I sit at the kid’s table, only now we are old enough to get a pitcher of beer each, and we eat crab cake sandwiches, fruit, smokey cheese, and spend the evening taking pictures of one another and laughing.
IV.
“Avatar” was enjoyable the second time around with friends who came from all over to see it with us. We tell stories and generally have an okay time. I’m glad that they seem to accept my brothers and cousin without blinking much, so that I can let down my guard a little and not worry (like I always do) if everyone is having fun. On the way back to Rockville, we spend the time bantering about the differences in zombie infections, because it is important to know these things for when the apocalypse hits.
“I’d much rather it be zombies than a rage infection,” my cousin says from the back seat, sensibly. When I ask why, he informs me that it is preferable to have shambling zombies than running, enraged semi-humans chasing you. I can do nothing but agree.
It is an ideal night, and one that ends very late in the back of a nice car, driving down dark roads through the rain and fog.
V.
I am by myself in first class, on a plane to Baltimore. Heading north again, this time feeling very different, very much older. I manage to finish an entire novel on the flight over, some trash about a kickass vampire hunter. I’m also able to write a brief journal entry about my experiences this day and the last few.
It’s a moment of solitude for me, a moment that I have been waiting to savor for a while now. Even when my seat mate sits down–a quiet, withdrawn man who has on hiking shoes and reads a John Grisham novel the entire flight without even a word of acknowledgement–I’m thankful for the space in first class and the darkness that descends on the cabin as they dim the lights for the trip. It makes me feel alone on the plane, cocooned in my seat by the roar of the engines and the pressure of the plane as it cuts through the night.
Sometimes I can see dim patches of grey as we come further north, and I wonder what they are. Then I realize that they are long stretches of snow broken by trees and roads and houses. As we begin our descent, the street lights glitter more than usual, winking on and off as we come closer to landing.
It’s Christmas, it’s the holidays, and I’m happy to visit somewhere else I can call home just before the new year.
I was thinking about some of my favorite memories earlier tonight while driving back to the house. Sadly, it had also occurred to me that I haven’t made many phenomenal new ones in the past few months, thanks to the stress of moving several times, getting myself out of a terrible situation, starting a new job, and beginning to come into myself as an adult. I’ve carried too much along, and rather than jettisoning this excess baggage along the way like normal people should, I’ve simply packaged it neatly into the back of my mind, putting it away for later, even if I should never return to it at all.
This means that, dammit, I’m going to make some changes. There are several people still sort of hanging on that I need to just cut loose and let go of, people from the past who helped define certain parts of my life, but who no longer play a role in my day-to-day living. There are several opportunities coming that I think I should take, rather than close myself off to the possibility of them occurring. Because I’m (stupidly) still a bit superstitious, I won’t tell you about them until after they pass. Mostly because it seems that every time I become excited about certain things and tell the people that matter most, they don’t pan out and then I have to go back to every one of them and say, right, well, that didn’t happen.
Anyway, the point of this was to talk about good memories. This also ties in with a sad realization that my paper journal has become less a refuge and more drudgery and habit. I don’t grow from writing in there anymore, and part of me thinks it’s because I have creative outlets here, now. Paper journaling isn’t something I feel I should give up on, though. I’ll have to keep an eye on that. My entries have become logs of what’s happening, just straight telling. No insight, description, whimsy. I used to be good at that. Now my life exists very much in front of me; imagination has receded into the cracks. I need to bring it back, and I need to inject happiness into what may be a tough start to 2009. So, a few random good things, in no particular order:
- Not a bad day. Mark the tech guy for our company came in and fixed our internet. All that was wrong? The router wasn’t plugged in. Once we figured that out (well, he figured it out. I simply hovered around until he realized the problem and pointed out obvious things like… “The screen isn’t on!”), we simply plugged it back in, restarted the server, and that’s it! Internet that works!
- Walked down for an iced chai with Adrienne. Chatted, generally felt better about life. Saw Mike the cute bartender, who was dropping off a job application. I tried not to sound too happy upon learning that (an innocent excuse to look at and appreciate him, rather than pretending to be interested in yet another mocktail or whatever it was that our company serves during Market).
- Learned some terrible news.
- Julie was back teaching step tonight, and so I did it for as long as I could before pain rippled through my stomach. I got up as we were starting the abs set, and then walked straight out the door as vertically as I could, limped down the stairs, and folded myself into the car. I don’t remember driving back, only being in pain the rest of the evening. Maybe it was from being sad, maybe not. Maybe it was the mozzarella I ate yesterday, or the pineapple spears, or who knows. Maybe it was the chai, or the vigorous activity, or karma.
Finally, these things are mostly to comfort the friends and family that were left behind and so I feel a tad self-indulgent, adding to the ranks of other messages like this one. But I too knew Jamie, perhaps not in the closest capacity, but knew him for a time nonetheless. Worked with him last year. Today I sat shocked for what seemed like the rest of the afternoon (was it?) when I heard the news about his death.
I’ll remember…. mostly how he smiled all the time. The way he ambled down my hall at odd hours, tossing a football back and forth between his hands. He’d come to see me if we hadn’t gotten the chance to catch up in a week or two, and then once I’d exchanged pleasantries and hugged him goodbye, he’d wander back down the hall knocking on everyone’s doors. Pause in the doorways. Smile and say hello and then ask them about their own lives.
I’d come downstairs while on duty some nights in the small hours. Usually (and uselessly) I would be resentful at having to do a round so late, especially when I was used to my rest (spoiled, I know). He’d be sitting there, bent over a book, and I’d sit with him, or hang over the edge of the window and bitch about my silly life. Then Jamie would swivel in his chair, pat me on the back, and smile. Add an empathetic comment, always just enough to make me feel better.
If he wasn’t working he’d be pacing the Sus lobby, or sitting at one of the square tables, similarly bent over a multitude of books and notes, working meticulously.
Yet he always had time for a smile and a small chat.
I hope… he went easily. And that if nothing else, he dreamed peacefully as he went. I think all of the outpouring of love and support on his FB profile says the rest that I would say.
Friday. Longest day of work ever. Fatigue, then sweating palms, underarms, racing heartbeat. Will I make it? A hurried dinner, spaghetti and meatballs. Driving. Traffic. I hate Atlanta traffic, but it’s something you get used to. Something that becomes part of your daily routine. Airport. Miss the exit. I drive back, aggravated. I kiss the Boy goodbye. Check in, weigh my bag (seven pounds), empty. Go through security. Alone but together with shuffling, angry people. Sweating. Wait, wait, wait. Stare at the screen. Wait for my name (ABR/K) to pop up on the cleared. Wait. Ten minutes to take off. Get a seat. 40B. Stow my bag, press my head back, turn on the air, sit back. Sweat. It’s hot. Sit next to a girl who scoffs at everything–the woman coughing two rows up, the baby crying, the jolt as we start to taxi–and a man who cranes over me to look out the window. Milosevic. Land. Early. Meet the Best Friend in the baggage claim. My bag is the first one out. Drive to school. Meet another friend. Stand, cooling down in the night air, as we talk, talk, talk. Drive back to the Best Friend’s house, fall asleep.
It is strange to be home, strange. It feels, however, wonderfully safe. Although I move, relatively anonymous now, down the familiar roads and in and out of buildings, I can’t help but feel as though I’ve arrived back at home. It doesn’t seem like almost five months have passed since I’ve been here. Can it be? Just yesterday, I was driving these same roads. They’re burned into my mind. I can call them at will and they’re still the same, with minor details, of course, changed. My life in the south seems far away, as if it were simply a short period and not some longer, more permanent Now. But I see friends and they pull me into their bodies and hold me, tell me it’s so good to see you! and you look different.
Do I? I only half agree with them. Perhaps I’ve cleaned up a bit, refined some of my clothing tastes and touched up some areas. But I’m still the same, still essentially the same person that left a few months ago. And while I talk about life’s changes with several people, in the back of my mind I do agree with them. I feel as though I have made my decision for how I’ll live. I decided to leave. To see if I could move on and do something else for a while. Most of my life I feel as though I’ve been in the same place, and suddenly Atlanta opened up and took me in, whispered that I could make my own life there if I wanted. And so yes, with moving there I have become more like the people I work with instead of who I was with my old friends. I’ve adopted some of their tastes in music, started to enjoy living an urban life, a young professional’s life, and have begun to accept life by myself, without the family hovering over me.
No matter what though, some things remain the same. Saturday I spend time with the Best Friend, and we banter like nothing’s changed. And today, I go to church and it’s the same people. I see an old friend and we eat and talk and nothing has really changed overall; the big picture is still the same but the details have changed. I wonder where we will be in another few years (in a few years, it will have been 10 since we first saw each other), whether I’ll still be down south and whether me and all of my friends will still relate to one another, or if it will be different again, as though we never knew each other at all. I hope not.
I just realized a half-repressed memory the other day while I sat at my desk eating shrimp Ramen for lunch.
For a lot of my latter high school years if I didn’t have to work, I would come home to a silent house, let my dogs out, and then go to my room to do homework. Towards the end of high school I wasn’t spending quite so much time on the internet, thanks to cross country and then the various things (I think) I did senior year. But I would be in my room reading, doing homework, or talking on the phone.
If nothing was going on and we were hungry–this memory recurred sharply to me yesterday–I remember standing in front of the gas stove over a pot of boiling Ramen. Dad only ever bought the shrimp kind since we wouldn’t eat the other flavors as quickly. To get a package, we would walk downstairs to the back of the basement and grab it from the ridiculous stores of it over the sump pump and on top of the slow-cooker.
My brothers and I would take turns using the large pot to boil water in. I like egg in mine, and night after night I remember cracking open an egg, dumping it in the pot and waiting for it to boil. It always gave the Ramen a unique flavor.
Well, I got sick of Ramen after a couple months of eating it most nights of the week, and didn’t make it again until recently, now being poor and as on my own as possible. It’s been long enough so that I still like the flavor, but I think after eating it for lunch every day this week and remembering what I just did, I might get tired of it again soon.