Nothing of great interest has happened since I got home at around 10 o’clock on Tuesday night. Today I woke up late, went to the dentist, ran some errands, and lounged around the house doing nothing in particular.
I was doing my laundry throughout the night last night—I had about three weeks’ worth of it, at least. And the clock in my room had run down its battery, so I had no clock after putting the computer to sleep. Hence, when I started reading Peggy Noonan, I must’ve lost track of time. I probably went to bed around 5:30 or so.
My mom woke me up at one o’clock; I got out of bed at two o’clock; I showered and realized that since my dad is in Florida, he had no shaving cream in the house. Eek, being grizzly isn’t cool when you’re about to have a hygienist in your face for half an hour cleaning your teeth. Oh well.
Driving always feels new and fresh whenever I’m home on break, despite the fact that I have the car with me at Wes and even drive occasionally. There’s something different about being on roads you know like the back of your hand; something refreshing and familiar, like you’re in command of your surroundings. Though despite the familiarity, the same frustration always rears its head, too. Lots of people seem to disregard traffic laws (and common sense) while driving, and the roads are jammed more and more each time I’m home on break.
I got to the dentist—early for once—and they took me right when I got there (for once). The hygienist scraped and poked and flossed and brushed a lot. She tried to get me to use an electric toothbrush again. And I once again proved that my salivary glands always work overtime once something’s in my mouth. But that’s probably too much information.
I love how the hygienist makes probably a quarter what the dentist makes, yet the dentist comes in for ten minutes at the end of the session, pokes your teeth with the little scraper thing, and then leaves. The hygienist does all the work. For once, though, the dentist actually made it look like he was doing something; apparently I have some small pit on one of my teeth that they said might possibly one day become a cavity.
That scares me! I don’t want a cavity; I’ve always had fine oral health. And hell, I’ve always had excellent health in general. Apart from the ordinary cold and the flu a few times, I’ve never had anything seriously wrong with me (at least, nothing that immediately comes to mind). I can always check “no” on all the medical questionnaires that ask me if I’ve had this problem or this allergy or take this medication. And I like that; I am really lucky to be perfectly healthy. I probably take that too much for granted.
But cavities! Man, I don’t want a filling. I want to keep my healthy teeth in my healthy body and stay healthy. So I guess I will change my toothbrush every six months and try to floss between all those teeth in the back, too. And brush twice a day everyday—not that I don’t now. I just miss a brushing once a week or so, sometimes.
After the dentist, I battled traffic to get to South Braintree Square and Grove St. and went to Stop & Shop to pick up the milk my mom asked me to get. But figures, they didn’t have any one-percent S&S brand in the carton. So instead I bought some shaving cream, put some bills in the mail, and did some banking. Interest rates on CDs have gone down, just in time for me to be within my 10-day grace period to take my money out of my old CD. Argh, economy!
Still lacking milk, I went to the Abington store and got it there. Luckily, I didn’t have to interact with any Abington people. I think I only saw one classmate, Kendra, who I never talked much with in high school, anyway. (In reality, interacting with most Abington people wouldn’t be bad. I had my friends and my enemies, and I think I make too big a deal out of Abington people. I guess it’s just a general aversion to the lesser points of high school social life—the superficiality of it all, not that it isn’t still present in college—and the thought that I have become someone new and different and somehow being dragged into my old self would compromise who I’ve become at Wesleyan and, oh, this is a subject for another entry. Moving on…)
Abington’s interesting. I don’t feel much of a connection to this place (in general) anymore. The people (Chris, family, some select people from my pre-Wes life), yes. But the town itself I find myself increasingly growing apart from. My side of town is still nice, but outside the limits of the Lincoln St.-Rockland St. area, Abington’s really commercialized now. And, I mean, it was before, and maybe it was just the misty greyness of today, but sitting stuck in traffic on 58, or 18… it just felt like I was sitting in Braintree again, surrounded by cars and gloom. Impersonal and uncaring. Ick.
I was going to quote The Weakerthans the other night, but I didn’t feel like it would reflect what I was really thinking. But now I can semi-confidently quote them:
And I love this place, the enormous sky
And the faces, hands, that I’m haunted by
So why can’t I forgive these buildings
These frameworks labeled “home”?
I came home, sorted the mail and read the paper and watched the weather and put the dinner in the oven: lasagna. Mmm. The Ledger has been pretty sparse since I’ve come home; must be the run-up to Thanksgiving. Local news is terrible; you think the big, abstract issues like the war in Iraq and the sub-prime mortgage crisis and such are important (and they are), but then you read the local paper and watch the local news and see what’s actually touching people’s lives: absurdly high heating oil prices, vandalism of churches, drug overdoses and drug busts and drug addiction and drunk drivers and murders and rapes and corrupt officials and crumbling schools and everything horrible, and you realize that though there are big issues out there that need attention, there is so much happening so close to home that people in the real (“extra-bubbular”) world have to contend with everyday. It always puts things in perspective for me.
I realized while eating dinner alone and being alone in the house what great sacrifices my parents have gone through to send me to college. They hide it, to be sure; trying to give me some cash when they see me, taking me out to dinner when they come down to Wes for a special occasion, never complaining or asking for any real sacrifice on my part. But I can see what they’re going through to get me through college (I’d say they’re doing it for my brother, because they are, but the financial reality is that his tuition and expenses even down in Florida are just a tiny fraction of Wesleyan’s).
My mom took on her job while I was in high school, I’m sure to get some extra money and the health insurance we needed. She’s been working at NEAP since, and has worked the night shift. During the busy season, which is now, she gets home at around one in the morning. My dad gets up at 4:30 and comes home around 4:30 most of the time, busting his balls all day. And then he comes home and my mom is at work. Tonight I went through the routine he probably goes through every night: coming home to an empty house, heating up the dinner my mom made for him, watching some TV, paying bills, waiting for my mom to come home, falling asleep from exhaustion.
The heat in the house is turned low, I can’t take long showers, and the lights are off as much as possible. I could go on, but every time I come home I notice some new way that my adventure in college is making life harder for everyone but me. If I ever get rich, I swear, the first money I make will be going to paying my parents back in full. If there’s anything I take from this newest reminder of familial sacrifice, it’s that I need to stop fucking off at school and become someone—someone my family can be proud of, someone that makes up for the sacrifice that they’ve always been so willing to make on my behalf.
Speaking of my dad, he made it safely down to Florida, driving the whole way by himself. Phew. He and my brother are down there, spending Thanksgiving together. Andrew wasn’t able to get Thanksgiving break off from work, so he couldn’t come home this week. I think he’s pretty lonely down there on his own. I never call him enough, either.
This will be the only Thanksgiving of my life when we haven’t been together as a family. It’s a major bummer.
That pretty much sums it up.
I haven’t seen Andrew in 137 days now. He’s coming home for Christmas, though, and if possible I want him to fly to Hartford so he can stay with me a few days in Middletown. But I think the tickets have already been purchased, and to Boston it will be.
I watched Black Hawk Down tonight and that obviously stirred some emotions. I went on a Wikipedia rampage and started with Somalia and the American intervention, which led me to military helicopters, which led me to missiles, which led me to submarines, and before I knew it I was investigating anti-satellite weaponry and French nuclear warheads and Soviet SCUD missiles and all that good stuff.
Somehow everything I’ve ever been really interested relates back to power; how it’s used, who holds it, how it has been used in the past, and so on. From my socialist days to my conspiracy-obsessed days, to my disjointed thinking about what would be interesting to pursue after college, it all had to do with power and who was holding it, for what ends, how it was working right in front of our eyes and in our wallets and in the satellites in space and the subs patrolling waters halfway around the world. And what fortune to be born in America, what with the largest expression of power the world’s ever seen—funded and operated by us! The problem is, how do I funnel down all that desire to know, to understand, to judge and, yes, to wield that power… how do I distill it and make a viable career choice out of it?
Do I go into intelligence? Politics? Government? The bureaucracy? Become a conspiracy theorist? Ah! WTF am I going to do with my life?!
Ugh. There is a crow making noise outside. That means it’s time to stop thinking, and go to bed. I have to help my mom with the dinner when I wake up. And maybe go running, lest I let my initiative languish and fail to make it into a routine, as has happened so many times before.
Sometimes I think I lack the physical and mental stamina to be a great man.
… Wow. What a way to end an entry. Comments will be disabled.
