Today I spent time on the telephone with two college friends, and sent an e mail to a third college friend. It is hard to imagine that I am now over 20 years out of college. It is even harder to imagine that it was 35 years ago that I was reading the World Book, learning about Mussolini and Antietam, between trips outdoors to throw footballs, pick and eat pecans, and try to catch mosquito fish from the huge community drainage ditch, with tiny minnow nets taped onto broomsticks. Sometimes I am in a thrift store and I'll see a set of World Book or The Book of Knowledge or Collier's or even an old Encyclopedia Brittanica. I'm always tempted to get a set, although now a set of books would just be too many pages and too many facts. Even a simple telephone call is filled with facts and associations--people I've known, things I've felt, emotions I've shared, things I've forgotten. Even the spaces during a call--those interval-of-time spaces, are pregnant with meanings, filled with history. Sometimes I want to pull the volume G, read the entry for Gurdonark, and try to memorize both paragraphs. Then I'll set it up as a song, play it on my kazoo, and no doubt annoy the heck out of any listeners who are melodically inclined. But maybe if my life were recast as a brief song, I'd treat the melody with a bit more respect, and get busy adding to the tune.
at age eight I read the entire world
Today I spent time on the telephone with two college friends, and sent an e mail to a third college friend. It is hard to imagine that I am now over 20 years out of college. It is even harder to imagine that it was 35 years ago that I was reading the World Book, learning about Mussolini and Antietam, between trips outdoors to throw footballs, pick and eat pecans, and try to catch mosquito fish from the huge community drainage ditch, with tiny minnow nets taped onto broomsticks. Sometimes I am in a thrift store and I'll see a set of World Book or The Book of Knowledge or Collier's or even an old Encyclopedia Brittanica. I'm always tempted to get a set, although now a set of books would just be too many pages and too many facts. Even a simple telephone call is filled with facts and associations--people I've known, things I've felt, emotions I've shared, things I've forgotten. Even the spaces during a call--those interval-of-time spaces, are pregnant with meanings, filled with history. Sometimes I want to pull the volume G, read the entry for Gurdonark, and try to memorize both paragraphs. Then I'll set it up as a song, play it on my kazoo, and no doubt annoy the heck out of any listeners who are melodically inclined. But maybe if my life were recast as a brief song, I'd treat the melody with a bit more respect, and get busy adding to the tune.
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