What's Next?

Hi everybody. Sorry I'm late. There was traffic on Rte.9 and the potholes couldn’t afford to fix themselves.

Thank you for reading my words today. I'm pretty big into words. I enjoy hearing them, and particularly enjoy reading them, and sometimes when I am convinced by Chulu, will write them. Above and beyond all of these, I especially appreciate the relationship between the form and function of a word. My boyfriend is quite patient with my constant musings on the origins and true meaning words. Take pancake. I thought of that one in bed this morning. Cake in a pan. Delicious genius. My other favorite is "roll", named either for how the baker prepares the dough, or for what happens when it falls off your airplane dining tray during take off.

Anyways. Back to the point. I like words, and I have been feeling quite abandoned recently, as everybody seems to be speaking only in numbers. The number of billions lost on Wall St. The number of people fired in the state of Michigan. The number of coffees I wasn't supposed to buy this week but did.

Even our dear frenemy facebook has jumped on the numerical bandwagon. Rather than simply informing their network that they are going to a baby shower (awesome), thousands of our peers have taken to recording exactly 25 fun and random things about themselves, apparently meant for sharing with every old friend, college buddy, crazy aunt, random mailman and stranger in their life.

I haven't tried yet, but I’m not even all that confident that I could come up with 25 interesting things about me. Numbers 1-10 would be better categorized as "weird", numbers 10-15 don't need to be shared with the random girl from London who happens to have the same name as me and is therefore my facebook friend, and numbers 15-25 would all be forced into censorship by the mere existence of #1: both of my parents have facebook. yikes.

Despite being borderline creepy, the “25 things” phenomenon is incredibly revealing. It has definitely opened my eyes to the unbelievable diversity of my co-workers. We all share a passion for special needs and teaching, but I do now wonder at times if that is indeed all that we share.

Almost all of the lists I have read were useless, but a few described my own weirdness to a T, and others offered some real insight that I am grateful to have read. Others were so ridiculous, they were just begging to be re-published in a second place. For your Saturday afternoon leisure, here are my favorite random facts about other people, in no particular order. There names are not written in order to protect their fun & interesting identities.

8. Living with you parents actually isn't that bad unless you have to tell other people about it.

17. I have a secret desire to be in an a capella group. I am confident no one would want me.

16. [Intentionally left blank in memory of my first pair of white pants, which I wore as a young lad of five or six to a wedding on the dunes of Nantucket, at Sankaty Head Golf Club, but which were subsquently ruined by a grass stain I obtained while chasing a hawk at sunset]

18. I miss living within walking distance of my friends

12. i love new pens and paper, the smell of home depot, and the feeling of turning pages in a new book

22. I own a Snuggie, and I’m proud of it.

If this 25 things activity reveals anything to our generation, I believe it will be this: we really are so much more similar than we are different. This last one is from a high school friend. It is too beautiful not to include:

8. …People who free themselves, free others.