Voteration
I woke up bright and early this morning, chug-a-lugged some coffee, and made my bleary way to my alma mater, Graham Road Elementary, to get my vote on. I got there at 6:03 and there was a line of pre-work voters, but it wasn't too bad. I stood in line with mostly couples. Apparently voting is a couples sport, so I felt out of place with my singletude. But then I got to go in before everyone cuz there were more A through L's than M through Z's. Ha ha, suckers.
It has gotten less weird to be in my old elementary school, but it still feels odd. We vote in the cafeteria and I still remember gathering for assemblies to sing Great American Hero and that rainbow song by Kermit. To make it even stranger one of the secretaries from the school, tho' now retired, is an election officer, and she still remembers me! It is the freakiest thing ever. Nice, but freaky.
For some reason I don't expect anyone to remember me. This is partly because I myself have such a bad memory for faces and people. I can barely remember kids I went to college with, and that really wasn't that long ago. It's also that I tend not to look back too much; I am as I am today and therefore whatever I was before is irrelevant.
It's a strange feeling to see people From One's Past. This weekend I went to CircusJeff's wedding. The attendees included kids Jeff went to high school with (they aren't kids anymore but they're always kids in my mind,) some of whom I've hung out with in recent years, but some of whom I haven't seen since they visited Jeff in college. One was his good friend Dave, who I recognized, but I didn't expect him to come up and start talking to me and know stuff about my current life, which he totally did. This happened a lot at Jeff's wedding, because Jeff is the nicest person ever and his friends are also the nicest people ever. Nice people with good memories.
Also attending were two of my room-mates from college, Sarah and Julie. I call them room-mates because we lived together and because I can't think of a descriptor that sums up what they were. They were huge in my life at the time. We acted out great psychodramas and were each other's audience. And then we left and fell out of touch, and then there they were, back again, exactly the same, and our group dynamic was exactly the same, and it was like if we wanted to we could just go back to the same pre-war apartment in the Fan and buy groceries and own cats and argue about feminist politics and everything would be exactly the same. And then we left the wedding, and I don't know if we'll stay in touch now.
The wedding was great - great ceremony, great food, good music, good people. The bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome and as a couple they were ecstatic and it was a good time all around. Atomicate was kind enough to accompany me, and I hope she will forgive me for missing her gig on Sunday night, cuz it was another epic fail in my attempts to go see her amazing band Aubriot. I kept forgetting to introduce her to people at the wedding because in my mind, all my friends know each other and we all have the same shared history, so she knows about the time that Sarah and I were bloodthirsty wiccans in a production of The Bacchae, and Sarah knows about the time that Atomicate and I played Mark's house party, and we'll all head down to Hell's Kitchen in Newark for some bright pink cocktails after the home bout with the Pinchloafs and Belle and Christopher Talkin', and then we'll have brunch at Bilbo Baggins with the hobbits, all of us all together.
It has gotten less weird to be in my old elementary school, but it still feels odd. We vote in the cafeteria and I still remember gathering for assemblies to sing Great American Hero and that rainbow song by Kermit. To make it even stranger one of the secretaries from the school, tho' now retired, is an election officer, and she still remembers me! It is the freakiest thing ever. Nice, but freaky.
For some reason I don't expect anyone to remember me. This is partly because I myself have such a bad memory for faces and people. I can barely remember kids I went to college with, and that really wasn't that long ago. It's also that I tend not to look back too much; I am as I am today and therefore whatever I was before is irrelevant.
It's a strange feeling to see people From One's Past. This weekend I went to CircusJeff's wedding. The attendees included kids Jeff went to high school with (they aren't kids anymore but they're always kids in my mind,) some of whom I've hung out with in recent years, but some of whom I haven't seen since they visited Jeff in college. One was his good friend Dave, who I recognized, but I didn't expect him to come up and start talking to me and know stuff about my current life, which he totally did. This happened a lot at Jeff's wedding, because Jeff is the nicest person ever and his friends are also the nicest people ever. Nice people with good memories.
Also attending were two of my room-mates from college, Sarah and Julie. I call them room-mates because we lived together and because I can't think of a descriptor that sums up what they were. They were huge in my life at the time. We acted out great psychodramas and were each other's audience. And then we left and fell out of touch, and then there they were, back again, exactly the same, and our group dynamic was exactly the same, and it was like if we wanted to we could just go back to the same pre-war apartment in the Fan and buy groceries and own cats and argue about feminist politics and everything would be exactly the same. And then we left the wedding, and I don't know if we'll stay in touch now.
The wedding was great - great ceremony, great food, good music, good people. The bride was beautiful and the groom was handsome and as a couple they were ecstatic and it was a good time all around. Atomicate was kind enough to accompany me, and I hope she will forgive me for missing her gig on Sunday night, cuz it was another epic fail in my attempts to go see her amazing band Aubriot. I kept forgetting to introduce her to people at the wedding because in my mind, all my friends know each other and we all have the same shared history, so she knows about the time that Sarah and I were bloodthirsty wiccans in a production of The Bacchae, and Sarah knows about the time that Atomicate and I played Mark's house party, and we'll all head down to Hell's Kitchen in Newark for some bright pink cocktails after the home bout with the Pinchloafs and Belle and Christopher Talkin', and then we'll have brunch at Bilbo Baggins with the hobbits, all of us all together.
posted by walkinhomefromthethriftstore at 6:14 AM
5 Comments:
This is not fair. The weepily grateful feelings are supposed to subside at some point after cutting the cake and all! I'm at work, woman! Have you no heart?
Thank you for being there, WHFTTS. I only wish I had seen more of you, and please tell Atomicate that I totes didn't recognize her without her PJs.
Well, hopefully the weepily gratefulness will distract you from the fact that I haven't gotten you guys a wedding present. (Yet. I haven't gotten it YET.)
so many men don't recognize me without my PJs.
it was an absolutely lovely wedding. i'm sorry i kept calling Julie "Julia" and "Julianne" and other things that weren't her name. i'm just hard of hearing!
there were couples at my voterteria, too! and i totally hear ya on paragraph three.
I think I may have introduced her as Julia before remembering her name is Julie. See, my mind is mush.
My sitio de voteracion is not so full of memories. I still love it, though, because it's a church hall and so I get to see that the place where people have had receptions and fiestas of various sorts has a disco ball and mirrored columns. Muy funky.
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