On This Day: Your History

[ER]

November 21, 1992 It was misty and rainy and exceptionally nice if you like those sorts of days like I do, and I went on a bus downtown by myself to interview for the job I got and briefly kept at a bakery that made (overpriced) specialty cookies sold by the pound. I didn’t think I’d get the job but I must’ve interviewed well after all. I waited for a later bus at the immense main library with its twelve acres of floor space, which I enjoyed very much. Dana and some friends from her college went to the OSU-Michigan game, which ended in a rare tie. She stayed over and partied all weekend, as was her style. (She told me I’d never be a party girl when I was her age so she had to make up for the both of us. Uh, OK…) And it was a bad day for the Queen as a fire at Windsor Castle did horrible damage and made a number of pensioned war widows who lived there homeless. I watched the news and felt down about all of that, though all in all it’d been a good day in the Ellieverse.

[ER]

Having minor surgeries tomorrow, nothing worth writing home about but I don't know how sore I'll be, ummmm, probably pretty sore, so figure I'll post this now in case it's all a fiendishly clever plot to kill me under local anesthesia.  (If so, respeck, it's going to work!) What the hey, I enjoy the personal archaeology of these like I did the 25 memories thread this past summer, and I like the past. it's safe. It teaches. The present is a masked ball inside a garden where everybody's a got a concealed stiletto. The future is a terrifying place I dread. So looking back is kinda my thing. Guess you've noticed. Why am I apologetically explaining? Sod you. And thanks if you're reading this. And sorry for the sod you thing, just joking, really. But sod you all the same if it applies for any reason. Sorry, I'm jittery, I'm having minor surgeries tomorrow. Have I mentioned? Am I bovvered? A bit, Lauren, a bit. I'll be scarred (two r's) with little tiny skin dimples til they heal.


November 22, 2003 Went to Columbus for my cousin Jared’s annual Ohio State-Michigan party, where the game held my attention for about the first quarter, and after that I mostly just hung out, and in a Schadenfreude way secretly found twisted delight in the collective howls of anguish when Michigan won, which has proven a rare event in this century, OSU going 17-2 in the annual matchup since 2000. Drove back with the man I eventually married and though it was a nice day and I was happy with him, I was also turning a conversation with a man I knew in Austin over in my head, and wondering why I’d said a particular something to him I did, words that were like dropping a lit match near spilled gasoline, and thinking how I should probably back way off in our friendship, because down in Texas this other man’s marriage was not doing well and it was clear he had feelings for me. Much as I could try to deny it I also knew I was not incapable of polyandrous sentiments, and those are no fun for anyone, so that was another good reason to fade from the picture, though I didn’t, and as time would tell, 2004 would get complicated.

[Trevor]

Having minor surgeries tomorrow, nothing worth writing home about but I don't know how sore I'll be, ummmm, probably pretty sore, so figure I'll post this now in case it's all a fiendishly clever plot to kill me under local anesthesia.  (If so, respeck, it's going to work!) What the hey, I enjoy the personal archaeology of these like I did the 25 memories thread this past summer, and I like the past. it's safe. It teaches. The present is a masked ball inside a garden where everybody's a got a concealed stiletto. The future is a terrifying place I dread. So looking back is kinda my thing. Guess you've noticed. Why am I apologetically explaining? Sod you. And thanks if you're reading this. And sorry for the sod you thing, just joking, really. But sod you all the same if it applies for any reason. Sorry, I'm jittery, I'm having minor surgeries tomorrow. Have I mentioned? Am I bovvered? A bit, Lauren, a bit. I'll be scarred (two r's) with little tiny skin dimples til they heal.

Sending good wishes 

[ER]

November 23, 2007 Crazy day. I was promised the weekend off but I had to get up before dawn and drive sixty miles to work in another state to help sort out some miscommunications. That made me have to stand up both my friend Clare, with whom I was supposed to go downtown for Black Friday shopping, and my cousin Alison, when we were supposed to go to a public Christmas tree lighting event near her house, but that evening Landon and I did go to see B.B. King on stage, so that ended up being significant.

Before we went back to his house on the southern riverfront, where I was living half the time, we went up to see the (by then already) lighted tree after all and say hi to my cousin, who lived near the big public square where the tree was, and in this strange moment we passed a giant Krogers store in a cool part of town, and out of the blue, like he was having some inner monologue that accidentally escaped him, Landon, this pretty-boy dick-flinging machine back in the day, gestured at the store and said, “Going shopping there got me laid so many times in the ‘90s….”

He went into this spiel about how he’d meet single women there, blahblahblah, phone numbers, hookups, and I thought…really, dude?

He said I got weird on him after he said that and I said no I didn’t get weird. He said I thought you didn’t care about that stuff and I said I don’t care about that stuff, and he said you must, you got weird when I told you that. I said if I cared I wouldn’t be with you after half a decade considering the first few years I knew you about a tenth of the women we crossed paths with seemed to be someone you’d had something going on with in the past. He said well sorry he brought it up. News flash, I didn’t care about his reminiscence but I did care about being told I cared when I didn’t.
 
We got to my cousin’s and the first thing she said when she saw us in her doorway was, “You two had an argument coming here, didn’t you?” I think I ended up sleeping at my own house that night.

[Alex]

23rd Nov 2019: I discovered Kristi had never watched Slither. This oversight was immediately corrected. I do believe she enjoyed it.
23rd Nov 2016: I made a comment about how people would be so glad to see the back of 2016. If only we'd all known what was to come.
23rd Nov 2013: Kristi bought me a Lego Death Star. It took me 4 days to build it, and a couple of years later the cat a few seconds to demolish it when Dagon leapt on top of it.

[Alex]

24th Nov 2012. I found a rather large spider sitting on my shoulder staring at me. I attempted to train it to sit there regularly, like a parrot, only cooler.

It was to no avail though alas.

[ER]

November 24, 1999 Couldn’t be home for Thanksgiving the next day but was able to call my family and tell them I loved them. I also grew so frustrated with Clive Barker’s novel Weaveworld that I gave up on the book and left it on a bench with a note half-inside that read: “TAKE ME AND KEEP ME.”  I’ve since liked to imagine it was found by a couple in love, who read it together while snuggling on their sofa in their socks.
I was way too self-confident in those days and used to walk alone at night through some highly questionable parts of town, admiring the brick Victorian warehouses while abandoning Clive Barker novels and thinking philosophical thoughts as I trod along in the dark. Nothing bad ever happened to me on my solitary strolls but looking back I’m surprised I got away with them as many times as I did. Either I’ve had a semi-charmed life or the waterfront area where I was staying wasn’t as dangerous as it seemed. (Because it seemed like a location shot from a vampire movie.)

[ER]

November 25, 2011 Got dragged out by Dana and Clare to Black Friday shop, which is “interesting” to do when you’re in your second trimester of your second pregnancy in the same calendar year. Got worn completely out and my ankles hurt, so came home and had a marvelously sweet time holding my sleeping six-month old son and watching Shrek the Third with my giggling three-year-old til she too fell asleep leaning against ever-widening me, then I turned on The Clone Wars and relaxed on the sofa til bedtime, the sound of crowds of shoppers still ringing in my ears but otherwise feeling ready to kvell* with contentment at life in general.

*After Clueless came out the summer before eleventh grade, we shiksas at my Catholic school adopted this Yiddish word, which none of us had ever heard of til the movie. We weren’t even sure we were using it right but we said it a lot for a few months to describe being happy. Oh well, I’m certain at some moment in history a Jewish girl in Brooklyn has exclaimed, “Holy Mary Mother of God!” so we’re even.

[ER]

November 26 1995 We were having spring-like weather reaching into the seventies, and I spontaneously took a road trip with my best friend Gina, nowhere glam or anything, but we drove up I-75 to Lima, Ohio (which we heard stood for Lost In Middle America) without really planning on going there, just…took off. She and I had a blast, even if we did just drive around aimlessly, talk to a few local boys, and then get Burger King before coming back. We made a promise to each other that someday we would road trip Route 66, but so far we haven’t made that long-ago plan a reality. Because I’d just recently learned my cousin Dana was pregnant, Gina and I talked about baby names and I said I thought Note would be a pretty name for a girl. Poor normal-ish Gina, who was long-used to the way my labyrinthine mind regularly spewed out weirdness she couldn’t follow, shrugged and mildly said, “Yeah, Note would be a pretty girl’s name.” I’m not sure I’d ever felt as free as I did that day, taking off on an unplanned trip in the pre-cell era, not knowing where we were heading and nobody sure where we were, but I suspect it’s how our beagle Ernie used to feel in the 2010s when he’d run off into the woods for days at a time. (Til coyotes ate him.)

[Alex]

26th November 2016. We went round to Kristi's brother and sister-in-law's house for a dinner and board games night. I can't remember the name of the soup she made, but it had to be boiled for something like 20 minutes before serving and was on the table to cool down. Her two boys got into a tug of war over a bag of rolls and the inevitable happened. Hali had her back to the table while this happened, but when Mason screamed she turned around to see me running off while carrying him and tearing his clothes off of him.

Gods only know what she thought I was doing.

Anyway, I got him stripped and practically threw him into a cold shower to try and lessen the pain of the burns. His arm and chest ended up bandaged up, but it wasn't as bad as it could have easily been. He tried getting his mum to give him the next day off school until I said "Mason, chicks dig scars", at which point he decided he might just be able to make it to school, but only if he could go with the bandages still on.

26th November 2012. Evidently, I passed a fitness test this day and celebrated by going on a pie-eating binge.

[ER]

November 27, 2016 Took the children to the opening night of the traditional Christkindlemarket the local Germania Society puts on each season, and bought them maple sugar Santa-shaped candies on sticks, and got some beautiful braided candles and cinnamon brooms. There were German carolers and big decorated trees and it was a happy night. Saw lots of Christmas decorations coming home and it truly felt like Christmastime had begun. wouldn’t mind Groundhog Daying that particular night, if I had to choose one.

[Alex]

27th November 2022. In what would turn out to be the most talked about game session I have ever run, an NPC accompanying my D&D group turned on them. He'd been leading them through a swamp and straight into trap after trap. The party assumed this was down to his incompetence, but failed to notice he never got hit by any of the traps himself. When the party prepared to fight the big bad of this chapter, he suddenly turned on them and killed one of the party members in a single round (that wasn't supposed to happen, just lucky or unlucky dice depending on how you look at it). Jaws just dropped as this character who for months they'd adventured beside and come to trust started filling the party with arrows.

Three hours after the game finished, people were still talking about how surprised they were when I realised it was after midnight, and having work the next day had to leave the conversation. It still comes up occasionally. That almost all my NPCs (in this game) have betrayed the party at some point appears to go entirely unnoticed as they continually expect the next ones to treat them fairly.

27th November 1986. The wound over my left eye had finally healed up enough. The knife hadn't cut deep enough to leave a scar and talk of the fight had faded to nothing on the playground. The attacker had been arrested. I still felt proud that I fought off a bigger and older boy and saved my friends from being mugged on Halloween. It would be 3 or 4 years before I'd hear what his punishment had been. 12 months suspended sentence. Looking back, I do feel bad for his younger sister. She was in the same class as me at school and I can only wonder how she felt. She did tell me that his dad had beat the hell out of him when he heard what he had done. This was the only time in my life when my dad would treat me as anything more than an afterthought really. He seemed proud of me as if what I had done reflected well on him. Since within weeks my mum would leave him, taking us with her it would be more or less irrelevant and I did not care for his approval.

I would later encounter my would-be mugger at school. He walked up to me and threatened me, but I stood my ground and he backed off, but that was a couple of years in the future and he would disappear from the area shortly after.

[ER]

November 28, 2006 Sent my friend a story I’d written about a nonagenarian preacher remembering back decades to when he’d slighted the grandfather who raised him, because he’d been sure the old man intended to be critical of the first sermon the then-young preacher had presented, only to learn after his grandfather’s death that the man had wanted to praise him for it. It was not like most stories I wrote and this friend was the first person I let read it. I also heard from an archaeologist I knew, and he had great new government job in the Rockies. I went places with my Aunt Sarah, my mom’s youngest sibling, only three years older than me, who was visiting the US after a few years away. She’d lived in Atlanta for a couple years during the Tiger, working for Coca-Cola in some exchange program, and wanted to move back. Her son, my cousin Joshua, was a baby at the time, adorably sweet, and it’s funny to think when he was thirteen he’d convert to Judaism, approximately blowing the minds of my mom and aunt’s conservative Irish Catholic side of the family.

[Trevor]

November 28, 2022

Today, I tore my pants 😳😳😳