On This Day: Your History

[ER]

2005: Attended an all-acoustic Alanis Morissette concert marking ten years since JLP was released.

How did you find her live? I went to see her once and I came away with the conclusion that either she owed her career to auto-tune or that she was having a very bad night.

Honestly not that impressive but she did seem into performing, unlike some other artists I saw live.

[ER]

June 21:
1977: My parents met on this day.
1982: Moved into the townhouse where we'd live for four years.
1996: On the solstice went to my cousin's daughter's baptism, then on the other end of the spectrum, that evening saw a slightly racy movie called Stealing Beauty.
1998: Local news showed footage of a "UFO" over the region's most infamous toxic waste site.
2001: Amid hail the size of shooter marbles, I was in a car when lightning hit a telephone pole in the same parking lot. Couldn't see or hear anything for a couple seconds.
2011: Made everybody promise if I ever had a tombstone it'd say Wish You Were Here Instead.
2014: At our lakeside cabin and my husband and I swam out about a hundred yards in absolute darkness while a storm rolled in and lightning danced in the distance. Kind of intense.
2021: Went out with my son and youngest daughter and gathered river stones for our "henge," and talked about the chance it might last millennia, like the Canadian medicine wheels.

[Alex]

21st July 2022.

The figures I have paid the most for, turned up today. I'd ordered them custom designed and made. About a week later one of the characters ended up being reincarnated in a female Orc body rendering the figure useless for him (now her).

21st July 2013.

A seagull tried getting in through the kitchen window. I was upstairs and heard Kristi shouting, so ran downstairs with one of my larger knives. The seagull decided to retreat, but this would be only one of several battles that summer with these hated birds.

[ER]

June 22, 1990 It was the fourth day of a mini-vacation to Land Between the Lakes on Kentucky's southwestern border, a guest of Gina and her family. Gina got to ride horses, which she loved doing, we hiked trails, found a ring-necked snake, went to a beach on Kentucky Lake, which was so wide the opposite shoreline was only a long green line on the horizon, and saw a bunch of soldiers from the 101st Airborne stationed at nearby Fort Campbell out on a party boat, having what sure looked like a great time. Stopped by a gift shop that night and bought my dad and grandpa some Civil War bullets, six dollars for a little pouch full, and then we made a campfire and sat out late til the coals glowed orange, and the sky was filled with more stars than we ever saw back home. It was the last great trip of my true childhood.

[ER]

June 23, 1997 Damn, this memory should be on early-afternoon TV and be sponsored by Tide.

It was Brian's twenty-third birthday, meaning we'd be back to it sounding like there were five years between us instead of four. I was three weeks out of high school, college was what I was supposed to be looking ahead to, but I was a few weeks pregnant, as I would be til a miscarriage early the next month. When people hear of a pregnant eighteen-year-old they think it's what the irresponsible idiot deserved, but conception can occur no matter how careful you happen to be. I was making the best of things by thinking of the nice parts of having a child, a boy I felt oddly sure, but not doing a great job of concealing my shock and low spirits.

Brian said I needed cheering up, so even though it was his birthday he got us tickets for a concert later in the summer featuring the improbable girl power duo of Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper. (Spoiler, we wouldn't go; I'd be far away by then.)

I had him open his two presents before his ever-present father was supposed to come over, and I'd gotten him a t-shirt with a montage of about fifty Monty Python illustrations, including the famous crushing foot, and I got him a ratty but charming 1958 black market edition of Allen Ginsberg's Howl that looked like it was published in a Brooklyn basement.

Then his father showed up on time, always on time, his father who was perpetually around, almost like he knew somehow he had such a limited time to be with his son, and he kissed me on the cheek as he always did, which I never liked, and because he was the only other person who knew about the baby---the only one who would for many, many years---he took both my hands in his and looked at me with this tender expression and said the news only made him happy.

Brian, too, seemed happy around his father, he always did, really, and honestly, if either of them were faking their joy about Brian and me being engaged and a baby coming, they hid it well, and in Joe's case I hadn't seen him smile so much ever. I thought I'd go on to know his son for decades, but it's been the other way around, Joe's the one still in my life a quarter-century later.

After Joe left we went to B-Dubs for two hours and met Brian's college friends, a mixed sort, brainy, brawny, radical, gay, one of them a Serbian who spoke half a dozen languages and who would eventually go on to work for the state department. Sometime before the end of our stay there I felt unaccountably tired all at once and a sudden sense of panicky dread hit me, but I didn't let on since Brian was having a good time. I thought of all the years at my school, K-12, all the hopes and expectations in my family that I'd be heading off that particular summer to begin the next chapter of my life at an illustrious university, taking the first steps toward the Ph.D everyone had always assumed I'd one day get. Instead I was on a path to be a teenage bride, a teenage mother. The things people were going to say....

Then without warning one of the least-loved aspects of myself appeared and I started laughing beyond my power to stop, laughing long and hard, waving away the others who were staring at me and kind of laughing along, puzzled, and Brian put his hand on my shoulder and asked if I was all right, and I nodded my head, still laughing uncontrollably, but inside I thought oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

(Yet at times over the years I've wished so hard I had had that baby.)

Shrug, my soap opera.

[Alex]

23rd June 2015.

On the basis of claims that violent video games made people violent in real life, I started playing Tiger Woods Golf. It failed to make me a world class golfer.

23rd June 2017.

We took Kristi's cousins around Elgin cathedral. The older one was rather dull and didn't really join in much (although he'd quit complaining about everything after I'd given him a beasting and marched him around Forres at my fast walking pace. After that he was too tired to talk.

23rd June 2019.

In the D&D campaign, an elite assassin had been attempting to poison the party and kept failing in a series of disasters that were worthy of a Pink Panther movie. The party then had a disaster when they decided to eat some out-of-date meat and almost all died.

[ER]

23rd June 2015.

On the basis of claims that violent video games made people violent in real life, I started playing Tiger Woods Golf. It failed to make me a world class golfer.

23rd June 2017.

We took Kristi's cousins around Elgin cathedral. The older one was rather dull and didn't really join in much (although he'd quit complaining about everything after I'd given him a beasting and marched him around Forres at my fast walking pace. After that he was too tired to talk.

23rd June 2019.

In the D&D campaign, an elite assassin had been attempting to poison the party and kept failing in a series of disasters that were worthy of a Pink Panther movie. The party then had a disaster when they decided to eat some out-of-date meat and almost all died.

Video games make people violent like forks make people fat.

Who on earth could fail to be awed by the ruins of Elgin Cathedral???

[Alex]

23rd June 2015.

On the basis of claims that violent video games made people violent in real life, I started playing Tiger Woods Golf. It failed to make me a world class golfer.

23rd June 2017.

We took Kristi's cousins around Elgin cathedral. The older one was rather dull and didn't really join in much (although he'd quit complaining about everything after I'd given him a beasting and marched him around Forres at my fast walking pace. After that he was too tired to talk.

23rd June 2019.

In the D&D campaign, an elite assassin had been attempting to poison the party and kept failing in a series of disasters that were worthy of a Pink Panther movie. The party then had a disaster when they decided to eat some out-of-date meat and almost all died.

Video games make people violent like forks make people fat.

Who on earth could fail to be awed by the ruins of Elgin Cathedral???

It was my ancestor who burned it down, the Wolf of Badenoch (remember though that on a long enough timeline everyone is related to everyone else some way).

[ER]

June 24, 2011 Went to Minneapolis for a Neil Gaiman event. He was great.

In the hotel room Landon asked me to tell him a story from my life he'd never heard before, so I told him about my twenty-third birthday/Christmas Eve 2001, when I got mildly toasted drinking a bottle of Swedish mead ("Made in the Viking Tradition!") with my mom, who almost never drank at all. Under my giddy buzz I was fascinated with this thing I'd never seen before, my mom tipsy, like an anthropologist would feel observing a member of some little-known tribe. The mead made my mom giggly to the point I ardently wished she'd been an alcoholic when I was growing up.

Landon laid in bed next to me and after a moment said, "I can't for the life of me imagine your mom intoxicated."

"Yeah, remember Gidget?" I asked.

"Forrest Gump's mom as a teenager?"

"Yeah, now just imagine Gidget with a few drinks in her. That was my mom."

"OK, I can actually see that."

"Yeah...."

[Alex]

24th July 2017.

Played Kristi's cousins at Betrayl at Hill House. Logan consistently ended up as the traitor. In fact, every game we played where someone is randomly a traitor, it was Logan. He also rolled really badly whenever dice were required. These two things combined led us to referring to him as our "Wil Wheaton".

24th July 2021.

Ash got ahold of a black marker while I was getting out of my uniform after work. This was the result.

[ER]

June 25, 1995 The second half of 1995 was infinitely better than the first, and on this day I came home after being away for almost a week in New York City with my dad, who had meetings there. We went back to the World Trade Center, which except for a memorial monument to the 1993 attack, was the same as when I was there before, still mighty, still swaying when you were on top, the elevators still made my ears pop, and the people who worked there were nice for supposedly gruff New Yorkers. Dad took me to Central Park, to museums (LOVED the AMNH dioramas!), we rode out to the Statue of Liberty and the water beside the boat was full of floating trash, including some embarrassing things to look down and see when you were standing next to your father. We ate at Nathan's, we ate at a rock cafe, we ate standing on a sidewalk, we ate at Burger King, home of the then-outrageously expensive four-buck NYC Whopper. We broiled on some truly hot days, (and I refused to put on sunscreen, ijit me) we got messed with by a mime, and we tossed pennies off the Brooklyn Bridge, which made me think of someone finding them in a thousand years. It was all a blast, but I slept about one night's worth of sleep in the four days we were there, because it was noisy and bright, and by the time we got home I was so tired I found myself bumping into things. Some of the accounts I've written about my dad in here haven't made him come off looking the best, but really he's a great guy and someone I've always been able to count on. After several emotionally stormy months, this was a very special trip.

[Leah]

June 25, 2022. Last time I had alcohol. Yea, it's been a year since I've had any alcohol.

[Alex]

26th June 2019.

Having gotten annoyed at people posting up various things that pretty much boiled down to support me on this or get out of my life, I posted this on social media.

Something I posted elsewhere.
"So people seem to get offended at a lot of things these days. I seem to be constantly reminded that I should respect everyone's views.
Here is the thing though. I don't.
I believe everyone should be allowed to believe whatever they want. If it hurts no one else then fine I do not care what they believe. If it hurts other people or goes spewing hatred then I will then choose wither or not I want to get involved and do my part to shut it down or not. If you get offended by something, that is up to you but it entitles you to nothing beyond the fact that you are offended by it.
It is my right though to decide when and if I will get involved in that, or if I've done something to offend if I should apologise. You do not automatically gain an apology just because you don't like what was said. You do not have a right to be defended by me or anyone else for your views.
I don't care if you were born in the same country as me, or if they have come here from another country. You get the same treatment.
If you chose to pursue a particular path promoting one lifestyle, religion, politics or whatever you do not automatically have the right to my support. I chose if I want to do that or not. Not you. You get no say in this at all in fact. You don't get to put conditions on it and tell me that I must accept you and your beliefs. You can ask for my support if you want (and indeed that is a lot more likely to get my support than demands. Tell me I have to back something am I am more likely not to just out of sheer bloody-mindedness).
I know people think they have all sorts of rights, but to be honest that is a load of bull. You have two rights. A beginning and an end. You are not promised how long it will be between these two events so make the best of it as you see fit. Everything else is just words written down on some paper. You can ascribe them as much or as little importance as you wish, but outside the tiny span of our lives and measured against the great flow of time they are ultimately meaningless.
As I said at the start. I do not need to respect your beliefs. I feel absolutely no urge to. I do however respect that you can have them and will do my best ensure you get to have them as long as they are not impinging on my beliefs. Even if I come out and openly disagree with what you believe in, I will fight for you to have them."

Every year since I have reposted this as a reminder to people that your cause isn't automatically my cause.

[ER]

June 26, 1993 I went out of state and played in a fast-moving double elimination tennis tournament sponsored by Junior USTA, where instead of regular sets you played individual games, leading to a bracket made up of those who'd lost a game, and those who did not, with the last player left in each bracket playing one another for the trophy. Relying mainly on my speed, since stamina was not a factor in these, I won my first three games, then lost my fourth 0-40 because I was simply outplayed, then did well in the one-loss bracket, only giving up three points total amid several wins, til I finally got knocked out in the final game that determined who played the last player left in the winner's bracket for the whole shebang. So in the end I only lost two games out of all I played, and though I liked regular sets and matches better than this format, I was proud that at fourteen I could hold my own against sixteen and seventeen year olds in an artificially high-pressure version of the sport. I also came to the notice of a recruiter for a camp in Florida that trained tennis players, but wasn't interested.

[ER]

June 27, 2022 In the spring I was invited by my erstwhile employers to attend a retreat in central Sweden, and went in early summer. When I pictured Sweden I thought of blue skies adorned with a midnight sun, forests of tall pines, cool northerly winds chilling the nights, and blond people constantly having sex with other blond people, but except for the non-stop blond-on-blond jävla, that wasn't what I encountered. For starters it was in the upper-eighties, and while the sun did shine late, there was a peculiar absence of all wind, leaving flags draped to the effects of gravity. And while I'd pictured virgin forests if not virgin residents, there was a lot of heavy industry all around, putting more smoke into the air than I thought green-crazy Swedes would've allowed.

I don't want to give the impression it was a bad trip, because it wasn't, I'm glad I went, but it was not what I'd thought it would be. Where we were was as flat as the American plains, with picturesque birch trees here and there, and I left the retreat center for a walk down a country road, and about a mile and a half later saw a farmhouse amid a vast potato field. It wasn't gorgeous but it did hold a certain rustic charm, so I paused to look, which triggered the farmer's rather beefy dogs, who came hurling toward me full-tilt, all but foaming at the mouth with eagerness to bite me. It's amazing how fast a person can run when motivated.