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It's always been strange to me how the most random things can trigger memories. A certain smell or sound or image can bring up something far back in the past. For me, a lot of times the trigger isn't even directly related to the memory. Now I can't even remember what made me even think about this, but it is my earliest memory.
I was 2 years old when my brother was born, but I can remember the day incredibly clearly. Not because I was excited or happy about getting a new brother, (I was, but I can't remember the day he was brought home at all) but because I was so terribly traumatized by what happened. Really my brother's birth is just incidental to this memory, because it indirectly caused the trauma.Invasion of the Mommy Snatchers
It's March 1984 and I am 2 years old, we are living in a suburb of Nashville, TN. I have a vague recollection of my parents telling me for a while that I am getting a new brother, but I'm sure I have no idea of how exactly that is going to happen. I figure he is just going to show up at the door one day and we'll go run around in the yard or something. I wake up pretty early and, just like any other normal morning, I go into my parents room to lay down with Mom until she is ready to get up and fix my breakfast.
This was not a normal morning.
As I walk up to the bed I notice that Mom's hair appears to have gotten darker during the night. Instead of her usual blond hair on the pillow, I see black hair. I guess this was not terribly concerning to my 2 year old mind, because I continued on. I think I was a strange kid, because I wouldn't just climb in bed. According to my parents I would always just stand by the bed and stare until they woke up and put me in bed. I imagine this was kind of a distrubing way to be woken up until you got used to it. Anyway, I remember doing this same thing on the morning in question. The thing is it was not my mom who turned over and looked at me.
I don't really remember the exact details of what happened next, but I do clearly remember paralyzing fear. I remember thinking that someone had taken my mom. It took a while before I calmed down enough to realize that this was one of my parents' friends. Evidently my brother decided to come in the middle of the night, and he didn't just show up at the door like I thought. Apparently Mom had to go to the hospital to get him, and they didn't want to take me with them. So this nice lady was going to stay with me until my grandparents could come up from Alabama.
As I said I have no real memory of my brother coming home from the hospital. In fact, I don't have any clear memories at all until several years later. I'm sure the only reason I have any memory of this day is that I don't think I have ever been as scared as I was that morning.
Over the past couple of weeks I've noticed an increasing number of people on Twitter saying that Twitter has gotten lame, gone mainstream, or that it has "jumped the shark". There was a dramatic rise in these type of posts last week with Ashton Kutcher/CNN's race to 1 million followers, and also with Oprah beginning to actively use the service. Honestly, I have been a little confused by all these tweets. To me, the beauty of Twitter is that you don't have to read things written by or about people you have no interest in. As of now you have complete control over what shows up in your feed. If you don't care what the Big O had for breakfast, don't follow her. If reading about what Kelso did over the weekend bores you, don't follow him. That's the beauty of the service. Each user can essentially customize it to be whatever they want it to be. If you are one of these people that want to know every detail of celebrities' lives, you can find out probably as much as you want. If you just want to talk to people you know in real life, you can do that too. You can see as much or as little as you want. If you are seeing too much info about stuff you don't care about, it doesn't mean that Twitter has suddenly become lame, it probably means you suck at choosing who to follow. That is not Twitter's fault.
So, following this logic, if I see people in my feed talking about Twitter being too mainstream, be warned you will probably be unfollowed.
Here's some of what I like to do in my free time. Not great, but some of it turned out OK. Enjoy.
Click the picture to see some more.
I was actually asked the following question yesterday at work.
"On these new keyboards, how do you know if the Caps Lock is on?"
Instead of taking the easy approach to answering this question and just, you know, type and see if ALL THE LETTERS ARE CAPITALIZED!!! This mental titan decided the correct course of action was to completely stop what he was doing, walk across the hall into my cube farm, interrupt my work, and ask me a question that he could have found the answer to himself in approx. 1.5 seconds. I understand not knowing the answer to something, but I do not understand being too lazy to try and figure it out yourself before you go and disrupt somebody else.
Some people just have no business owning/using computers. If you are not going to put in a little effort to learn how to use the thing, get a typewriter. I'm not saying you have to be an expert, just get some basic knowledge. Like, how to tell if your Caps Lock is on...
OK, so I'm back home and in a much better frame of mind now. Not having to work 12 hour days anymore will do wonders for your mood. However, I still have not gotten over the fact that I had to break up a dog fight in the hallway outside my hotel room. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and read the previous post.) Every time I think about that I have to convince myself that it was not a hallucination. I spent quite a bit of time after it happened on Google trying to find any mention of a similar situation. I completely struck out. If anyone else has better google-fu and can find something, I would love to hear about it. As of now, to the best of my knowledge, I am the only person this has happened to.Now on to something completely unrelated.I am just about caught up on all my reading, so I need some book suggestions. Since I am a good capitalist, and do not expect to recieve something for nothing, I offer you a few of my more obscure favorites as barter.*Wind, Sand and Stars~ Antoine de Saint-ExuperyThis is a great non-fiction. It's a collection of personal stories from the author who was a mail-plane pilot and also flew for France during WWI. Very well-written, and has some great stories.*The Songlines~ Bruce ChatwinTravelogue of a trip Chatwin took to Australia. Has some interesting historical elements, as well as a look at Aboriginal culture and traditions.*The Land Where Blues Began~ Alan LomaxHistory of the origins of blues music. Written by a guy who traveled throughout the south recording old blues musicians for the Library of Congress. If you like history and/or blues, you will love this book.*The Andromeda Strain~ Michael CrichtonProbably the least obscure of this list. This was one of Crichton's earliest works, and I think it got overshadowed by his later stuff. This book is one of those that gives you that weird creepy-crawly feeling up and down your spine. It has been adapted for TV/Movies a couple of times. Those attempts should be disregarded.Alright, this post has gone on long enough. Hope you enjoy my book suggestions, and look forward to hearing yours.
Well, I have suddenly found myself having an excess amount of time. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a negative thing. However this extra time I have on hand lately has involved me sitting in a hotel room by myself watching reruns of House. I have been doing an unusual amount of work-related travel the past couple of months, thus leading to the afore-mentioned alone time. I said all that to say that in order to kill some of this otherwise mind-numbing boredom, I would start this blog. Probably this will just involve whatever random thoughts are running through my head whenever I've got some time to sit down and write something.
I always thought I would enjoy doing a little business travel, but it's not as much fun as I had imagined. Some trips I take are pretty fun. For instance when I go to Chattanooga I can hang out with a couple of friends from school that live there. Now, I'm in Knoxville. Working 12 hour shifts. And I don't know a soul who lives here, except the other people who work up here. Most of them are about 15-20 years older than me. This translates to me being bored out of my mind in a hotel room. It's Super Bowl Sunday, and I can't even enjoy the game because it's not much fun to watch by yourself.
OK, so that last paragraph was a little emo, but I'm going to leave it in. I'm feeling a little depressed right now so please don't hold the emo against me. I promise I won't start wearing all black and eyeliner.
One good thing about this trip is that I tried Thai food for the first time. It was awesome. I'm going to have to have it again before I go home. I'm pretty sure there isn't anywhere in Florence to get Thai.
If anyone is wondering why I'm in Knoxville, I'm doing some support for the Kingston Ash Slide recovery effort. The experience will probably good in the long run, but right now it's not much fun at all.
Enough rambling, I meant to keep this short. Screwed that up huh?
Stuff About Things by Andrew Gatlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by contacting: gatlin [dot] andrew [at] gmail [dot] com.
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