I tend to think of things in terms of how they fit in time-wise. I got a degree in history and the past is always something that has been a hobby of mine. So when I am watching something, like a film, that takes place at any time other than the present, I can't help but think about what was going on in the world when the events of the story are unfolding. Even if the setting is the present, but the movie or book or TV show was produced in the past, I think of that past. It is one of the great joys of watching certain shows, like The Twilight Zone (thinking about the world of the early 60s), but it can also distract. One example off the top of my head is Pulp Fiction: no matter what I do, I just cannot stop myself from thinking about everything I know about the mid 90s while watching it, including what the actors were probably doing after work. Watching the early seasons of Friends? Talking about the Clinton administration? Whatever, in any case, I sit there and think about that rather than the movie...it is a curse.
In my own life, I also think of things temporally. I think this is not unusual. People often come up with when something happened by speaking of it relative to some bigger event in life. That was before I graduated high school; it was right after I got married; not sure exactly, but I know it was before I started working at my current job. It is important, to me, to think like this. I cherish the past and consider it worth remembering.
To this end, I try to block my life off into sections. The sections are sometimes fluid, and one day of the past might fit into multiple sections. But when I think of them, I get a very specific sense. If my life were a book, there would be tabs at the beginnings of these sections (Temporal Tabs if you will). I will highlight one for you now. It is simple enough because it is just one year but it is worth remembering, and worth describing. The year is 2011.
When I think 2011, I think of a carefree time, a comfortable time. I think of a period of getting back on my feet, but feeling stronger all the time. It was a good year. If you have read one of my previous posts, you will know that my dad died in 2010. When 2011 started, it had only been a little over a month since his funeral. I remember spending that New Years Eve with my mom. I got an Ale 8 from (I think) Ameristop on our way home from spending time with my grandma. I put the bottle, once empty, into a koozie my dad used when he was sick. I still have the bottle and it is still in the koozie, which reads "Golfers Never Lose Their Grip". So that's how it started.
The first few months I was in the second semester of my sophomore year of college. Honestly, I don't remember much about that. Did the Royal Wedding happen in 2011? If so, I had a big paper on the night before that I had to write. By the time I finished it, it was time for the wedding festivities to start over in London, which I thought was funny enough for a Facebook status at the time.
I do remember the Spring Semester ending. I was so happy to be free again. The last time I had time off was the Christmas after dad died which was sort of hard, so this time was more of a breath of fresh air. One morning, my sister and I started watching the X Files and we spent much of the summer watching it when we both had time. Amazingly, I think we got all the way to the point where David Duchovny left the series by the time school started again in August. I remember that summer well. I was very concerned about the Reds, who had had a playoff attempt the year before for the first time in many years. They were not as good in 2011, much to my chagrin. One game I remember watching, the Reds got smoked by a pitcher named Ian Kennedy for the Arizona Diamondbacks. I was in disbelief as he just decimated Reds hitting. I think this might have been a bit of a fluke because, while I am sure he is an incredibly talented man, I have not heard much about him at all! I also think that season saw a game which went into a ridiculous inning count, something like 19 innings, I don't know. The Reds lost, early in the morning, with their opponents (pretty sure it was the Phillies) using their CATCHER to pitch because they had exhausted all other options for the evening...
But it was all good. Good times are what I think of. Mowing my grandma's lawn, going to Mass and dinner afterward on Saturday, helping mom vacuum on weekends, going to Kings Island. All of this consistent, with very few interruptions, all summer. And then my Fall semester in 2011, the beginning of my Junior year, was by far the easiest semester I have ever had in school since probably primary school. I was taking 3 fewer credit hours than my other semesters due to a sort of scheduling loophole (I know that does not make much sense, but it is not worth explaining), and 3 of those hours were this computer class which usually ended in 20 minutes (instead of the 50 it was supposed to run) that involved the most basic computer functions on Excel and Word. Oh my goodness, what a time.
I also was taking only two classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the later one ending at like 10:30 or something, so I got to go home and have the rest of the day off. And one of those classes (the later one) was East Asian History which was one of my very favorite I have ever taken. What made it even better is that I was also much more into Anime then, and I had a good time thinking about Anime when learning Japanese history. AND the professor was the father of one of my favorite high school history teachers, and he was great like his son. Gosh what a great class. And when I got home, I usually made a Meijer pizza in the microwave and ate it while watching American Ninja Warrior and then falling asleep.
One other great thing that happened that Fall was my discovery of Creepy Pastas. That was when I found the /x/ board on 4chan. I had one hell of a good time scaring myself with those things. It was relatively early for creepypastas. Of course many of the classics existed, but they were newer, and I was experiencing them for the first time.
I also ramped up my Youtube career for the only time in my life by doing terrible reviews of 1.) the video games I own for older consoles and 2.) comic books because my cousin got me into buying comics for the New 52 (as I think it was called) when DC revived many of their characters such as Batman, Superman, the Green Lantern, etc.
This was a period in time when my little sister and I would spend time together watching YouTube (Vlogbrothers, before they got really political) and playing games together (...I did enjoy watching her play Nancy Drew games, I have good memories of this, okay, sue me).
So, in the context of coming off of the greatest tragedy I had ever experienced, these happy moments filled my calendar. I should mention that my family was the bedrock of everything. Sharing my time and my interests with them during this period made it such a time of recovery. I sort of fell off the world when dad died, and I came back because of 2011.
The year ended similar to how it began, spending New Year with my mom. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the 2011 temporal tab is that it really was self-contained. That basically never happens. The year was its own distinct section of time, like an island between two periods, with the illness and death of my father preceding it. The next section started right at the beginning of 2012, when in January I started a serious relationship that lasted five years - and ended poorly enough to surround all the memories associated with it, even if only temporally, with poison and toxicity (see my previous post of Treacherous Nostalgia). But anyway, that 5 year period is its own section, with subsections in it because it was so long, but the beginning of it is so distinct as to serve as the end of that beautiful and warm section known as 2011.
So here's to 2011. You helped me get back on my feet, and even today you still provide a warm smile to my face. I hope that more 2011's await me in the future, because it was a really awesome year.
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