1997

I was at my parents' house over the weekend (why yes, I did have some peanut butter while there) and was doing that familiar rummage-through-the-crap-you-left-behind-and-see-if-any-of-it-is-crap-you-want-to-take-with-you routine. I claimed a long forgotten pair of shoes which, sadly enough, were identical twins to the ones already on my feet, proving my resistance to wearing anything except black boots with a slight heel. I opened what I assumed to be an empty shoebox and discovered it was filled with random stuff that I hadn't wanted to throw out but didn't know what to do with (I now have an attic full of junk experiencing the same kind of identity crisis). Long letters from my summer camp best friend who I never saw again, a Cherry Poppin' Daddies CD to serve as a painful reminder that I once jumped on the swing music bandwagon, pictures, mix tapes, and a eight-year-old issue of my college paper, the illustrious Wheaton Wire. Of course I sat right down to look at it and I was immediately the happiest person on the planet to have found it again. It doesn't sound like much, I know, but it took me right back to May of my sophomore year.

There was an article on the Head of the Peacock, which was the annual make-boats-out-of-duct-tape-and-string-cheese-and-fall-in-the-pond event that kicked off spring weekend, which was just one of those perfect college experiences. Anyone who went to school with me and is reading this right now can feel free to berate me for my overly romanticized memory, but it just always seemed that spring weekend came on the actual weekend when it really started to feel like spring...which, as anyone who grew up or went to school in New England knows, is nothing short of miraculous after a long winter.

There was another article reviewing the Indigo Girls concert that had just happened on campus. At the time, they were one of my big favorites, and the concert was completely perfect...perhaps partly because I hadn't yet met Jason, who would forever taint my love for the Indigo Girls by commenting, "Great, another song about FEAR." Anyway, I was there with my friends, hearing some of our favorite songs, and it was just a great night.

There's a picture of the members of the male a capella group, who were like our own personal boy band, promoting an upcoming concert (or should I say jam) which means there's a picture of Mark, who I wasn't friends with at the time, and hardly ever talked to while we were both in school together, except for the time he was visiting someone in my dorm and stopped by to tell me he'd lived in my room two years earlier. Another time, I was sitting on a bench talking to someone and he walked up to ask me if I was the same Red that his friend had made out with recently. I wasn't, but don't you love the genesis of conversations between college students?

There's also my column, which is probably the reason I saved the paper to begin with. I started writing it freshman year and continued it pretty consistently, I think, through senior year. I have absolutely no idea what I wrote about, to be honest, but I must have come up with a hell of a lot of crap. This is the only issue I saved so I'm not even exaggerating when I say I can't remember at all. There's also a big picture of me next to the column, because the layout editor at the time had a crush on me. It sounds cute, but of course, because it's me, it ended up working against me. He came by and took a picture of me but then told me that he didn't have pictures of Keith or Luke, the other columnists, and didn't seem particularly motivated to acquire them. I didn't know Keith yet because it was his first column, but I called Luke and told him he had to give this kid a picture because I couldn't be the only one with one. So Luke turned in this picture of himself wearing a huge clown wig with his baseball cap on top. So there's clown guy, pictureless guy, and a disproportionately big but normal picture of me, which made me look like the girl who didn't get the joke.

Keith's debut column, and the only one I really remember, except for the one when he used my name in vain, was about halogen lamps and how they shouldn't be banned because...well, because fuck you, we like our halogen. We were all pissed when they banned them, even though they were PILLARS OF FIRE. I love the causes you jump on when you're nineteen. Maybe it's because the only things you own when you're nineteen are your clothes, some books you never read, and...a halogen lamp.

Fittingly enough, my column title in that issue was "Memories, Like the Corners of my Mind." I didn't actually always quote Barbra Streisand, but you'll have to take my word on that. So, yeah, it was just a nice little nostalgic snapshot. Call me sappy, but it made me happy.