Tag Archives: nostalgia

Dramatis Personae

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From preadolescence in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, to Doha, Qatar, I have tended to gravitate toward weirdos. Even Work Rachel, though she came and left my life in a handful of months, was pretty out there. The people in my life are so off-center, and they’re so different, that I can’t help but think of them as characters.

I bring this up because I took the weekend to digitize my photo albums, and I rediscovered my past. And then, I remembered the characters in my life, and characters are meant to be drawn. I don’t plan on turning this into a thing, especially as MY LIKENESSES ARE TERRIBLE.

When I arrived at Hastings College, I didn’t exactly blend in. I was darker colors, plaids, and torn jeans, and the entirety of the Midwest was also plaids, but also a blend of earth tones and pastels. I was alone. Suddenly, someone came along, made an obscene comment about the holes in my jeans, and lured me into his den of filthy degenerates.

For a while, it was amazing. With our newfound freedom, we frolicked in innocent (yet very horny) fun, mostly involving smoking cigarettes indoors. Unfortunately, it didn’t last. We were kids, and we didn’t know better.

We started being really horrible to each other in ways I’ve compartmentalized and would refer to as “toxic,” if I didn’t feel like that word has lost all meaning. We’re not bad people. None of us were. We were young, and we got swept up in the moment.

Since running into these photos, I’ve been remembering the early days, before it got complicated, and some of the characters. From left to right:

There’s me, who seemed to be living under a bad-luck curse.

Rick was the one who befouled the reputation of my beloved grunge jeans and brought me into the group of misfits he’d been gathering. Not only was Rick a dancer with moves that could hypnotize a sultan, but he was sincere and curious, two of my favorite traits in a person.

Susan was a pretty, petite young woman who could fell a man by belching on him. She was your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, without the politics. She was never wrong, and this infuriated me. Sure, she was right most of the time, but did she have to be so belligerent about it? When I met her, she had a Canadian boyfriend, and I said, “Sure.” Then I met him.

If I were dream-casting Greg, I’d go for a young Joan Crawford, smoking a cigarette and waiting for something that piqued her interest. He moved like a marionette, broadly swinging his limbs from one pose to another, going from irritated to overjoyed in an instant. Greg taught me the value of camp and Bea Arthur, without which I would have never appreciated the one good part of the Star Wars Holiday Special.

JJ is difficult to describe. His black T-shirts, sometimes sans sleeves, heavy work boots, and unabashed mullet cast him as a redneck. And he was. He could keep up with Susan on the race to the bottom, and he thought he was the most hilarious person he knew. But sometimes, he’d get really calm, and he’d say something so profound, it would blow the back of your head off. But sometimes, he’d get really calm, and he’d say something so unbelievably stupid, it would blow the back of your head off.

These were just a few of the weirdos I got to know in my early days, far away from home, in a strange land, trapped somewhere between adult and child.

Come on, Baby, Light my Cigarette

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When I first started smoking cigarettes in October, 1994, I had a cute, little, red Bic lighter, and it was magical.

At that time of my life, I mostly hung out with Greg, a drag queen in disguise; JJ, the philosopher redneck; and Susan, an old, grouchy gay man in a teenage girl’s body, in Greg’s dorm room. We smoked a lot of cigarettes because it was the nineties, and you could smoke indoors if you wanted to.

For about a month, I always had flame in my pack-pocket (currently my phone-pocket). This was something special because I tended to distribute my lighters in random places with random people, so I always depended on the other cavemen for fire.

What was even more amazing was that, if I had to leave the dorm for a chilly autumn, the lighter was there, in my jacket pocket, always. I never had an excuse not to smoke.

On a day of sadness, my Bic flicked its last. If mid-nineties culture was tipping one over for your homies, I absolutely would have. I loved that fucking lighter. I disposed of it with ceremony.

And yet, when I reached into my jacket pocket a few hours later, the cute, little, red Bic was there, and it still had juice. I thought I’d thrown it out, but it was a strong possibility, even then, my memory of the event failed to correspond with what actually happened.

I didn’t figure it out for a while. On my way to class, I lit a cigarette, returned the lighter to my jacket, and slipped my hand inside my pack-pocket to find another cute, red, little Bic.

The whole time I’d had three identical lighters, and I didn’t have a clue. Maybe something magical did happen here. But the spell was broken, and one-by-one, the remaining Bics disappeared.

I quit smoking 15 May, 2007, four days before I turned thirty-one. I have never stopped loving those triplets.

Shuffling Onward

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Saturday marked two weeks since I found out Shane was dead. I’m getting used to it. While he was still alive, I thought about him constantly. When I did something with a piece of art I’m proud of. When I ran across a phrase or something in a novel I wrote that he’d appreciate. When I thought of the most offensive joke imaginable, and only he wouldn’t judge me. When I would hear “Oh the Guilt,” a Nirvana song I didn’t know existed until two years ago, and intended to ask if he’d ever heard it.

I never got to ask. Kind of an on-the-nose title, isn’t it? Each time I’d think of something I wanted to share with him, I remembered I couldn’t anymore, and he died again. And again.

I was numb the three-day weekend after I received the news. Artistically, I had a very prolific weekend, as I went to all the cafes I frequent, in order to avoid sitting behind my desk, gazing out the window like I did when he called. Sunday, my parents were there for me in the morning. In the afternoon, Nicole and I explored Union Market, a rapidly developing complex of shops, restaurants, and cafes. When confronted with death, you need to do something that makes you feel alive.

Last weekend, Nicole and I returned to Union Market for a pop-up art fair. By that point, my thoughts about him weren’t as intrusive, and I could function on manual pilot. We wove in and out of buildings, admiring the media of sculpture, painting, sketching, inking, collage, spray paint, etc., all by local artists.

How could I wander through a collection of modern art and not think of my friend, the accomplished artist? Rather than hurt, though, I would look at some of the pieces, knowing he’d really like what I was seeing, and I was comforted.

Now? I’m feeling like my life is returning to normal. I still have those moments that take my breath away, when I forget he’s gone. There is also the slow torture of seeing the publication of my novel around the corner, and how he will never read it. I dedicated it to him while he was still alive, and I didn’t tell him. I wanted him to be surprised when the book came out.

As Paul McCartney says, “Oh-blah-dee, oh-blah-dah.”

I miss him so damned much.

Painting You a Picture

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In Downtown Gallup, New Mexico, there lies a street that only exists for about three or four blocks. This is Coal Avenue, and it is here that I will tell you about my friend, Shane.

Picture a second-story window, and standing before it on the inside is a young man, no older than twenty. He’s not particularly tall, and he’s bulky, but not unattractively so. He wears his blond hair down to his chin, and his clothes, usually denim, were covered in paint. He sticks his head outside and yells out, “I thought I told you to leave Angelita outta this!”

On the sidewalk, a tall, skinny teenager with big glasses and a long, blond ponytail shouts back something misogynist and vulgar, despite that the two boys are not the former, but are definitely the latter.

Vinny was Shane. He was an aspiring artist who returned to Gallup after many years of homelessness, wandering through eighties and nineties alternative culture like Forrest Gump. For a time, he lived in a blue Volkswagen Beetle. He later surfed couches, and eventually got a job waiting tables at the most popular restaurant in Gallup (it was Italian) and an apartment of his own, a studio apartment that he eventually decorated with a bed, a kitchen table, and pastel smears all over the walls. He even had business cards. I will forever remember them because they read:

Shane Van Pelt

Artist/Writter

When I met him, I had already found my identity in the darker side of Alternative culture. Meeting Shane at a football game altered that course, so instead of a path of black clothes and self-destruction, I became something more bohemian.

Shane had a lot of patience for me, who grew up with undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses. When I went away to college, he was not the best pen-pal. But he did do things like leave phone messages at the front desk of my dorm informing me that Angelita was pregnant.

After his marriage, which I heard about third-hand, he and Elizabeth moved to New York City. He visited me a handful of times in college, shuttling back and forth from there to Gallup. People, seeing us together, assumed we were brothers. We were. He made quick friends with many of my friends as well because he was so freaking charming.

I ended up in New York, with nothing but a little bit of money and my friendship with him. He showed me around Manhattan and showed me where to buy weed. In fact, my first weekend there, he took me into Harlem to pick some up, and we didn’t know at the time that Louis Farrakhan’s Million Youth March was taking place. “Try to look inconspicuous,” he told me.

Elizabeth knew people, and during one of the first weeks I was living New York Adjacent, she took us to a party. Shane and I were the only people either of us knew, and he retreated solo as soon as we walked in the door. I found a corner and suffered, and an intellectual in his thirties approached me and asked if Shane and I were a “team.” As in a band or a writing duo? Even apart, we were simpatico.

I wanted to be a comic book illustrator, but I didn’t know how to draw. Shane, despite the raw stick figures I was starting with, was the first person to call me an artist. And if someone as cool and talented as Shane Van Pelt says it, it must be true.

He, Elizabeth, and their newborn Ava retreated Upstate, and some of the best three-day weekends I ever spent were in his drafty house in Binghamton, after I shelled out sixty bucks for a bus ticket. Together, we’d sit in his studio and work on one of two screenplays, Convenience Store Maniac or The Day the West Went Dry. The former is lost to history, which is too bad because I thought it was brilliant. The latter we’ll get back to.

When I got married, there was one person I wanted at my side, and that was Shane. I have to say, though, twenty years later, I’m still disappointed in his Best Man speech. What was important, though, was that he was there.

For personal reasons I won’t go into and because Shane is a bad pen-pal, we had drifted apart during my marriage. However, we talked a lot more after my divorce (i.e. once every few months), and no time had passed between. We were still insulting each other in gross, not-Woke ways, and we could talk about anything.

In 2022, I recalled that some of the best memories I had were hanging out in Shane’s studio and doing screenplay jam sessions. I took a trip to see him that summer, and for seven days, we extended our two-hour movie into a series. He said he knew people at Netflix. I didn’t care either way. I just wanted the quality time with my best friend.

He called me more frequently than that afterward, about once a month. However earlier in 2024, he told me he was committing to talking more often, and the calls came biweekly. He told me about his plans in Wheeling, West Virginia, which would bring him a short bus ride from me. He had to deal with some property issues because somehow, the high school dropout I knew who used his tips to buy art supplies had property issues now.

The last time I talked to Shane, it was this past Monday. He had called me, scared, because he’d been without some of his medications, and he was starting to feel the withdrawal. He told me he would be getting his medications Tuesday, so I told him that this was a moment. The moment would become a memory, like all his memories, and life would go on. The last thing I said to my best friend was a lie.

Since Shane has lived several lives apart from mine, I don’t know many of his friends or relatives. I met Elissa, his mother, once, and I knew he was devoted to her. Elizabeth has been a good friend to me with the patience of Job. I haven’t seen his daughter Ava since she learned how to walk over a three-day weekend and instructed me how to move Daddy’s paintbrushes from one jar to another. I have never forgotten that lesson, even though I couldn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth.

If you go to his website and you somehow dig up his essay about grunge (Shane’s filing systems made sense to him, at least), you’ll see a storyteller chock full of story. After reading said essay, I have been constantly riding him to write his memoirs. Somehow, Shane has packed about eighty years of living into the fifty he had, and I hope the person who inherits his computer at the very least finds more of these essays. He was also working on a novel, and I was really excited to read it when it finished.

There’s so much more I want to tell you about him. I have stories, like the time we stood on the street, Shane scratching pastels onto a rogue piece of drywall and me, narrating the process in my best (okay, worst) Joe Pesci voice. Or how he stole that boombox from a house I was sitting for, and I was the one who got in trouble. Or the joy on my face the day after Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins hugged a painting he made for her.

Shane was an accomplished artist, with shows all over the world. Thirty years ago, I watched him go from painting nudes of Sherilyn Fenn to his current style, whatever that is. Is it Cubist? Surrealist? Impressionist? Outsider? It’s none of those things. Shane was, and always will be unique.

Shane Van Pelt died Saturday, November 9, at approximately 1:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

He had met me in every stage of my life, and he still liked me. He was probably the best friend I’d ever had. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.

A Day in the Life

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I don’t know if it’s ADHD or a symptom of our society, but I hate the quiet. For most of the day, I’m listening to something. While I work on art, it’s a movie or a YouTube video. While I work at work, I put on a podcast I don’t need to listen to. On the weekends, I like to cozy up in a cafe and get swept up in the busy lives of others.

The main reason I always like to have something on is because the earworms nestle in otherwise. Sometimes they’re fun songs, but usually they’re not.

Today, I’m not plugging into noise, and I’m paying the price for it. I’m hearing my favorite Beatles song, the one I can never listen to anymore, “A Day in the Life,” from Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is one of those rare songs ascribed to Lennon/McCartney that actually had contributions from both. If you know their style, you can pick which parts are theirs.

The numbness of the John Lennon part (“I read the news today, oh boy”) is how I feel having sacrificed passion for my sanity, and the McCartney part (“Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head”) is the result of that, i.e. going through the motions because you have to.

It’s a heavy song, and it never fails to bring me to tears. I found out when Newcastle died that it also described how I was processing my grief. Today, I found myself sitting on my bed, unmoving and unthinking, for ten minutes.

The only way I can feel anything right now is by writing about it.

 I read the news today, oh boy.

Rational Lampoon’s Vacation

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From October 25 through November 2, I was on a mandatory vacation. In September, I had run the vacation calculator, and I found out I had about sixty hours of use-or-lose vacation, so at the end of last month, I went to Colorado to see my friend Emilie. She was kind enough to show me some cool art galleries.

There were also some inspirational diners and cafes.

None captured my imagination quite like Corvus. So many colorful people came into that establishment for caffeinated refreshment.

For a couple of days, my sister and I hung out, including our hajj to Mile High Comics, one of the largest comic book stores in the country, possibly the world (not counting those perverts in Japan). It’s in a warehouse. A warehouse. The distance between me and bulbs overhead could be measured in light years. Most of the warehouse was actually a warehouse, storing and shipping comics all over the planet at marked up prices.

            They had rows upon rows of older comics, including a separate series of bins for variant covers. They had comic book toys, in their packaging, going back to the toys I collected in high school. Do any Xers remember The Power of the Force? The pre-prequel action figure line with really buff biceps? They had those. They had a bit of everything, including long out-of-print trade paperbacks.

I spent *cough, cough* dollars and started conversations with two strangers, the latter of which is a huge deal for me.

Emily and I spent Halloween together, and the first person we saw outside of each other was a waitress in bunny ears. It bode well for us, and we spent the morning in the mall, goofing off like teenagers whose joints weren’t cooperating anymore.

There were plenty of costumes on the retail workers as we went into an enormous bookstore, a comic store, game and toy stores, the Lego store, the knife store, jewelry stores, and Spencer’s gifts, the latter of which always gives me a giggle.

After retreating to our corners for naps, Emily had dressed up in a sexy medieval (sexy, not skanky) dress, and we wandered the neighborhood, looking for the coolest Halloween decorations, and we were sorely disappointed. Some people went all out, but most either ignored the holiday altogether, or just slapped a couple of pumpkins and a fake spider web and call it done. Some people had eight- or twelve-foot skeletons and expected their game would be judged based entirely on that. Oh, trust me, Alan: we’re judging you.

Emilie and I didn’t spend every waking moment together, even if I had inadvertently booked an Airbnb a block from her house. And honestly, that was for the best. She’s got her way of doing things, I have my way of doing things. She has errands, I have a muse.

When I had dinner without her, I had it shipped to me. However, since guests and hosts prefer to keep as far apart as possible, I had to intercept the drivers before they could ring the doorbell. This is despite that I specifically asked them to go out back. On one occasion, I ordered the food then went on a brief constitutional, taking a wrong turn that led me so far from home base that I had to sprint to catch the driver only moments before she reached the front door.

For our last day together, we went to Golden, the former home of my sister, which has a beautiful downtown. Unfortunately, for the second day in a row, we were disappointed. Golden has a whole lot of restaurants and cafes, but very few quaint shops to roam around in while discussing things of no real importance to anyone but us. We went to a coffee shop instead.

But Saturday, I had to go through that hellhole of airports to return home and to my life, and my Oscar, who is currently punishing me for not being Nicole.

Jacket Off

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I apologize for the title, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Now back to our regularly scheduled essay:

In 2002, my friend Katie and I went to Andy’s Cheepees, a vintage clothier in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. I had been living tough in New York Adjacent for four years by that point, and I had acquired a new personality. I felt cool. I had cool friends, and we did cool things together. But there was something missing.

I haven’t been to New York in ten years, but when I first arrived, and through the six years I spent there, everybody had a leather blazer, black with a medium-to-narrow lapel. You were practically issued it. And the thing about those jackets was, they were pretty cool. Even though everyone had one, they were cool. It wasn’t about conforming, it was about being as awesome as your peers.

I went to Andy’s Cheepees with the sole purpose of getting one of those jackets, and I quickly found one that fit (40L at the time). However, the guy at checkout wouldn’t sell it to me. Instead, he took me to the back and found me one in a dark brown with a wide collar, looking more like a pea coat than a blazer.

Most people who know me as an adult know this jacket. It was comfortable, it was awesome, and it was vintage. It made me more confident and sexy. It was around that time that I came up with Jack Murphy: Cop on the Edge, who became my alter ego. You all know Jack, he doesn’t play by the rules. He drives his beater through fruit stands. He violates the Bill of Rights. He was married once, but not anymore, as he lives in a shitty apartment by himself. He may or may not have a dog, whom he feeds people food. He says things like, “You don’t get it, do you? You just don’t get it.”

Upon meeting Jack Murphy, Rita called me Jackass Murphy because friends don’t want your head getting too big.

I retired the jacket in 2013 because it was pretty beaten up. I never got rid of it—it’s in my closet right now—but it’s not wearable. I replaced it with a similar jacket, almost the same color. This one looks like a leather safari jacket, but it’s as cool as the original, and I’ve worn it around Germany, England, and DC. 

There’s just one problem: I’m not sure I want to wear it anymore. Why am I making such a big deal about this? That jacket has been a major part of my identity for twenty-two years, and the weather right now is perfect for it. As soon as the temperature made it to the 40s in the morning, I knew the time had come, and I slipped it on, and meh. No joy was sparked.

I don’t feel cool anymore. I’m self-conscious about my weight, I haven’t had a good haircut in years, and I’ve forgotten how to smile. I do feel cool sometimes, but it has nothing to do with my jacket. Most of the time, I wear the denim one and layer it with a hoodie when it gets chillier. I only wore the leather one twice last year.

I’m a completely different person than I was twenty years ago. I’m a different person than I was ten years ago. One year ago. Six months ago, I didn’t have a cat. Change is the only constant. I think of it as regenerations, as in Doctor Who. Twenty years ago, I was the Shenanigan. Today, I’m the Bohemian.

In a few years, who knows? I might strut around the nursing home in my vintage leather jacket and bust some skulls. In the meantime, it’s waiting for me, if I’m so inclined. It’s my history.

A Day in the Life

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I woke up about ten minutes before my alarm this morning, and it still pissed me off. Oscar slept on the floor because I’d rolled over onto him at about 2:30. He knows my alarm means breakfast, so he bullied me into getting out of bed and feeding him. I brushed my teeth, cleaned out his litter box, made my bed, picked out my clothes for the day, and showered. Since it was super-early, I worked on a drawing until my favorite café in the DMV region opened at seven. I took the Metro the two stops and huffed and puffed it up some very Bay Area terrain. When I arrived, I enjoyed a breakfast sandwich while reviewing the proofs for my novel. I then continued working on my drawing and watched people for the next three hours, until the art store opened. I didn’t need paint, ink, or paper, so I just browsed. I also found the comic book shop Nicole had shown me years ago, but it wasn’t open yet. In this beautiful, late-summer day, I explored Silver Spring, Maryland and went home to open up my social medias.

The one and only post I could find that acknowledged what’s on my mind today was the car salesman meme, this one selling a plane that can crash into two buildings for the price of one.

I’m done until tomorrow.

The Furminator

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“Listen. And understand. That cat is out there. He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with. He doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until the birdie-on-a-stick is dead.”

In another regeneration, I went out a lot with my friends. Sometimes it was with one friend (Hugh or Mark) or it was a salon of drunken idiots (Rita) or it was rock and roll (Satanicide). Even though I was depressed, I cherished my adventures, and every Sunday, during my downtime at The Post, I summed them up and sent them out to a select group of friends who hadn’t yet told me to stop sending them.

I’m at an age where I stop telling people how old I am and start rounding up. My ex got custody of almost all of my friends in the divorce, and all of my hobbies are solitary, so I don’t have as many adventures anymore. That said, three big things happened to me Monday and Tuesday, and I’m going to report them to you.

First, Oscar is growing up to be a cat, where before he looked like a black ferret. He’s a teenager now, so all he wants to do is play, and when he’s not trying to convince me it’s dinnertime, he’s bugging me to get the birdie-on-a-stick and wave it in his face. He’s sweet, but I have a job.

One of my favorite things to do with Newcastle was take him outside to explore our backyard. One of my favorite things to do with Henry was put him in a harness and take him for a walk. I bought Oscar a harness, and a backpack so I could go for walks with him. It stressed him out, but if he could get used to it, he might have a good time.

Monday, I got him into his harness, which is hard because he’s coated with a thin layer of butter, loaded him in his backpack, and walked the three blocks to find the only open area of grass in my neighborhood.

I opened up the backpack, and he very slowly made his way out, saw me, and freaked out. He squeezed out of the harness and ran straight into traffic. I ran right after him, kicking off my flip-flops in the street, and I didn’t care if I got hit by a car, as long as Oscar got to safety. You’re not going to believe what happened next.

All four lanes of traffic stopped to let us make it across. I was expecting to watch Oscar die, but the asshole drivers of DC had our backs. I chased him through three backyards until he tried to hide under a hosta, and I scruffed him and brought him home. Because flip-flops are flat, you can’t tell they got run over.

That was Monday.

I love my job, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t fray my nerves. Between ending my day with that and public transit (still better than driving), I don’t want to have to deal with the nuisance of our concierge only being at the desk 50 percent of the time. So when I pick up any packages that come in for me, I tend to pick them up after I get out of the shower. Don’t worry, I dress first.

At 4:30 this morning, I picked up a package from Missouri and just assumed it was the carved owl I just bought for my owl shrine. It was not. With Oscar’s supervision, I opened the box to find another box, and in that box was this mug:

I did not order this mug. In the mug was a business card for a potter who lived in Florida, along with something that looked like a bookmark. On the back was a lovely note thanking me (yes, me—it said “Dear Jeremiah) for the letter I’d sent years ago and how moved they were. Life was happening, so they hadn’t replied, but they sent the mug as a token of appreciation. Signed, “William Pona tawa sina.”

I had no idea who the holy hell this was. I did not remember writing that letter years ago, and I didn’t know a William who made pottery. I visited the website and found out that’s a luxury mug. The clues clicked into place. It wasn’t the potter, it was one of my college roommates, Will. He lives in Missouri. I sent him an essay I’d written about him two years ago, and I’d never heard back.

I figured it out, but I didn’t figure it out in time to stop me from sending a polite email to the potter thanking him for the gift and expressing joy that my words touched him so much, as if I knew him.

That squared away, I had one last detail to attend to. What the hell is “Pona tawa sina”? I looked it up, only raising more questions. Pona tawa sina is from a language called Toki Pona, which was invented in 2001 and bridges the gap between all languages. Kind of like Esperanto, only less baffling. Pona tawa sina literally means “goodness toward you.” It’s a way of saying goodbye or thank you.

That was before work. When I arrived, there was a surprise waiting.

One of the many, many perks of my job is that we get stretch breaks lunchtime Wednesday and Thursday. When I started eating at my desk a year ago, the stretch instructor was Katja, a young, slim, petite, cute-as-a-button person with a pink pixie cut and a lot of energy. Katja was recently replaced with Hali, a young, slim, petite, cute-as-a-button person with a pink pixie cut and a lot of energy.

I hang drawings of Newcastle, Oscar, myself, and other pictures I’ve done, practically daring people to ask me about it. Hali took my dare, and I found out they were a bit of an artist themselves. They’re just learning about watercolors and painting around town, so the next day, I brought them my retired brushes, the cool travel set I’d purchased in Doha. There’s nothing wrong with them, I’ve just traded up. They’ve been occupying a small space in my art drawer, and I wasn’t going to throw them away. Now they have a loving home.

There was a thank you card on my desk when I got to work this morning. Hali wanted to tell me how important those brushes were to them, and they could not wait to take them out for a spin. They have an Etsy store, and I bought some stickers.

I’ve become such a hermit, it’s hard to imagine that I am having any sort of impact in this world. And yet today, the first thing that happened to me today was someone making sure I understood I had affected them, twice. Maybe I was wrong about my impact.