Seen on the Merritt Parkway near Fairfield, Connecticut:
Caution: Depressed Storm Drains
This brought up a mental image of Marvin the Paranoid Android. Then I imagined storm drains with a Point of View gun. As you can imagine from this state of mind, I was driving alone.
Now, why was a man who lives in Andover, Massachusetts and "never goes anywhere" driving alone on the Merritt Parkway? To get to my 35th Reunion at Haverford College. I might have skipped it, but since I'm Class Chair that would have been seriously bad form.
It's a long drive from Andover to Haverford, and there are several places where the radio stations from one metropolitan area fade out and the ones from another fade in. I can't usually remember what the station frequencies are in places like Hartford and New Haven that I don't often visit, so I use the scan function on the car radio. This gives a classic disjointed radio experience:
"...football fans were injured in a post-game... Africa cup. The final score was five nil...."
"...y mucho mas!..."
<fragment of a Beethoven overture>
<..."shana na na na nana na na na...">
As it turns out, the scan function was a good warmup for the reunion. I was often involved in multiple simultaneous conversations, while hearing several more around me:
"...back from Mexico, and the last I heard working in Portland again..."
"...still delivering babies, but it's hard without malpractice insurance..."
"...divorced 9 or 10 years ago, but she still keeps his name. I don't know why...."
"...I wasn't looking, really. They found me. The same thing happened when I came here...."
"...isn't really fun being the adult. The house is falling apart, and none of us have enough..."
"...can't really fool anyone here, can we? We all know each other's age, and who did what with whom, and what drugs we took..."
"...writing software, writing about computers, and blogging at InfoWorld.... three girls and a boy... I'd update ActiveSync and see if it helps... You did? It didn't? Oh, well..."
It was great seeing old friends, and talking late into the night. If late-night discussions could save the world, however, heaven knows that we would already have done it back in college.
Posted by Martin Heller on June 4, 2007 06:00 AM
