My Parent's Room

My memories of my parents room on Woodruff Street are as follows:

1. twin/maybe Queen-sized bed (I never knew what such designations were when I was young), covered in a white, closely crocheted bedspread that had a rough, somewhat knotty texture when you laid down on it.

2. a circular end table in the far corner that held the clock radio. I remember listening to some Atlanta Braves baseball games on that radio during the summer of 1983 when the Braves won the pennant behind Dale Murphy's hitting and the sidearm pitching of Gene Garber. Also, this circular table had a (naturally) circular drawer in the side. At my young age, I thought this drawer with its curved front was extremely special, almost hidden and secret. Perhaps this was because the table was covered by a cloth, the color of which I don't remember.

3. I do remember the color blue. Was it blue in there? Was the carpet blue or was the carpet red? And if the carpet WAS red, why do I have this association with the color blue?

4. My memory of the dresser in that room was that the top drawer held Dad's nail clipper set, his rubber change purse (the oval-shaped kind that you squeezed to make the slit pucker open to reveal the change inside), medicine bottles, colognes, watches, rings, and other odds and ends that I probably wasn't supposed to see. These things are still in the top drawer of a new dresser in their new bedroom in their different home. And I do find that I have to pause and make sure that I am remembering the correct bedroom. My mental image is sharpest for the current room. I can see it precisely and can tell you exactly where things are in that room now. My memories of the original bedroom of my youth (now approaching twenty plus years in the past) is, naturally, more hazy and less sure.

5. The closet of this old bedroom featured sliding panels of wood hang from the ceiling and can often jump off track (or maybe that is just remembering the exact same ones that I have in my house now . . .) but I do remember that if you slid opened the right (?) side of the closet, you gained access to Dad's clothes and down on the floor was his wooden shoe shining kit. I sometimes pulled that out and shined Dad's shoes for him (and later some of my own when I got old enough), rubbing on the black polish, letting it dry, buffing it smooth with the large, slightly violin-shaped brush with the fat, soft bristles, and shining up the polish with the always stained shoe rags. The shoe box kept all the circular tins of polish (various shades of black and brown), the brush, and the rags inside. You swung open the slanted rooftop sides of the box. Between the "roof" doors was the handle, topped with a rubber-like tread that could hold someone's shoe-d foot if you were working while they were wearing. But I always worked on the shoes when no one was wearing them.

Also back in the furthest reach of the closet was dad's hunting rifle. I don't know if that was always there, or if he brought it home after a Kentucky visit once we kids had reached a certain age. I wasn't even aware that it existed until I was almost a teenager. It stayed in its gun bag and I never got it out. I never saw Dad use it for anything and I have always seen it as a remnant of his childhood, when they sometimes hunted for dinner.

6. There was also a chest. (What Lynda calls a Hope chest . . . at least that is what she calls the one that she has. I don't know if Mom ever called her's by that name.) I never saw it without a small red and black, fringed rug-like top that sat on top of the simple wooden box. Inside, I think?, where extra blankets. I sometimes sat on that chest and the rug-like covering always slipped on the wood as my weight shifted.

7. There was a mirror on the back of the bedroom door. I could go in there and pretend to be Han Solo--drawing my blaster against the threat of Stormtroopers, or check out how my clothing looked on my, or simply make goofy faces.

8. There was a small bathroom in the wall to the left of the room entrance. I think the tub was on the right, with the sink in the middle and the toilet on the left as you entered. I remember the dominant colors being white and a pale yellow . . . but that might have just been the Georgia sunlight. While I didn't see this happen exactly, my favorite memory of this bathroom is that when Mom and MSquared were battling each other to solve the Rubik's Cube first, mom secretly bought a solution book without MSqured's knowledge, then practiced the sequence of turns in that bathroom so that she could pull a fast one on him one night . . . much to his astonishment and her delight.

7. In my memory, the room is always neat. The floor is tidy and everything is put away. In some ways that is the most striking memory of all regarding my parent's room. As I've proven, I did go in there, even napped on their bed at times. But it was distinctly their room and I kind of think I stayed out of it unless I had to be there or was looking for something specific.

This stands in significant contrast to how I think my kids treat Lynda's and my bedroom. The amount of stuff they leave behind, coming and going, getting ready for bed, reading books at night, listening to books at night, coloring, drawing, writing! It crawls at me, as Lynda can attest. But, I guess it shows they are comfortable with the space.

I just wish they could pick up after themselves a bit more.

Working at night . . . ugh

This is just a brief note dashed off to say "Sorry that I haven't been blogging more lately."

I've been trying to toss off some thoughts, observations, witticisms over on Twitter and I keep hoping that you are either coming here to WWYG to see the Twitter feed over on the right side of your screen, or you are plunging in with both feet and setting up your own Twitter account simply to follow my aforementioned thoughts, observations, and (well worth it, I think) witticisms.

I doubt that is too much to ask, honestly.

It's not like I clutter up the page with ads or find some mysterious way to charge you (monetarily, I mean . . . I suppose I can't put a price on the psychic trauma you might experience coming to this page) for visiting.

Well, I've got to get back to gulp . . . working at home. I don't like it, I'm not very good at it, and it just makes me surlier than normal. But judging by the extreme sentence construction I've got going on in this post, the rapidity of my stream-of-consciousness typing is telling me I need to put this blogging aside again and go back to the tedium of my 9 to ___? job.

Until I try again . . .

Ruminations on what is "real"

Have you heard of DJ Paige Railstone? I had not either . . . until sometime last week. Normally, this isn't such an amazing thing, as I am neither as hip or as cool as you might suspect. When I have the luxury of listening to indie bands and obscure stuff, it is . . . as likely as not . . . due to the generosity of some of my more "plugged in" friends.

But, I do read somewhat extensively on the Internets and it was through this avenue that I first heard (on Twitter no less!) about the talented Ms. Railstone. It was on Hank Green's Twitter feed post of July 31st that I first noticed this:

Just got "Off the Railstone" emailed to me by a stranger. Having a hard time believing I hadn't heard of#PaigeRailstone until today.

I didn't think much of it, to be honest . . . but the unusual name kept cropping up in Hank's tweets and then also in his brother John's tweets. Then a few others in the Nerdfighter community (who cross over into the Pottercast community . . . and whom I also follow on Twitter) started mentioning the name. So, huh, I thought. Some new musical act. Didn't seem very odd, since all of these Nerdfighters and Pottercasters are also Wizard Rock fans. Common groups of people who sometimes share musical interests. Not unusual at all.

And then, I read an interesting biography of DJ Paige Railstone that was posted by John Green. You can read the very interesting tale (and I recommend that you do or the rest of this won't carry much weight going forward) via this link. This certainly increased the intrigue factor, don't you agree? Leaving aside whether or not she had mad dj skillz (and I never bothered to investigate her music), she certainly had a colorful childhood. And good on her for rising above her problems to achieve something.

And then, I moved on with things. But . . . then came today.

And today, I loaded up my RSS feeds and saw that John Green, author of Paper Towns, had posted a new video. I watched the video and found out this information. (Again, I urge you to take the time to watch the video, so that you can understand what is going on. here.)

So . . .

. . . why should you care?

Well, perhaps you don't. But I thought this kind of dovetails into many of the thoughts I've ruminated about here on WWYG?! over the years--stuff about the mysteries of Internet fame, the perception of people versus the reality of people, and things like that. Mr. Green's experiment indicates to me even stronger that achieving notoriety on the Internet is a very tenuous thing. (Of course, the story of DJ Paige Railstone is infinitely easier to accomplish if you already have a dedicated of Nerdfighter followers who can be relied upon to spread the word if you dangle it out there.)

Still, it makes you question what is real and what is determinedly fake. And it made me think about how hard it can sometimes be to live up to the preconceived notions that swirl around us all the time.

Thinking about these preconceived notions made me sit down tonight and search out this stellar clip from the end of that awesome late '80s movie, Can't Buy Me Love. (For the third--and final?--time, I urge you to click here for a brief plot synopsis of the film, so that you can appreciate the extreme pathos of Ronald's triumphant (and very hackneyed) speech that attempts to heal all wounds and prompted one of the most egregious slow claps in pop culture history. [NOTE, please that I am a sworn enemy of the Slow Clap.]

(The real meat of the clip begins at the 2:00 mark in the video.)

So, what I want you to remember is at the 4:00 mark--"It's just tough enough to be yourself."

Indeed, Ronald, indeed.

So, I will try to put aside all these wasteful notions of notoriety and just try to be the best me that I can be.

(Maybe I'll even get a slow clap out of it someday.)

Passivity

Uh oh.

I'm in one of those moods again. (Sorry.)

*****

Right now I only see three types of people out there: 1. those that create, 2. those that consume, and 3. those that serve as middlemen between the creators and the consumers.

The artists, the visionaries, the free thinkers, the creative, they . . . um . . . create. They spin something new out of other stuff. They have the only thing close to magic in this scientific, rational world. They harness emotion, reshape definitions, bend rules, shake preconceptions.

They make something new--even if they are using something old to do it. But what comes out has a particular stamp on it, something that makes the new thing unique, worth of attention, pause, or even just brief thought.

The consumers, on the other hand, take that which is new and bring it into themselves. They define themselves by what they consume. They make it disappear. They might enjoy it to its fullest, sucking all that wonderful newness right out of it (and the creators say a hearty "Thanks" . . . and why not?). But the consumer is (at worst) a hole where created things are made to go.

And then there are middlemen. They don't create, necessarily, but they make it easier to connect the creators and the consumers. They package, they interpret, they categorize, they tag, they blog, they shout "Hey, over here." But at least, they are doing something. At least they are serving as an interpreter between Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea. They don't lead the expedition and they don't have the innate knowledge of where the expedition should go . . . but without their service, no one achieves much of anything.

Creators, middlemen, consumers.

Wanna guess where I am in all this?

Fun, then Fair

Yesterday we had a cookout at the house.

Today we're off to the State Fair for the first time.

Follow my Twitter posts from the fairgrounds--www.Twitter.com/dtm1971.




-- Posted From My iPhone (so, I apologize in advance for any typos I missed)