I have a little calendar hanging inside a kitchen cupboard. Each year I get a new one at an Italian deli. It’s a weird habit – getting these calendars. I’ve been looking at them for years now and I hope the deli never stops printing them. I wouldn’t mind if they changed up the calendar’s reminders, however.
For some reason, a couple of years ago the calendars were printed with reminders of the beginnings of wars or the dates of battles. Recent stuff, too. I mean, if old, historic references were printed on the dates, I could probably get into that. But these odd anniversaries are of things I’ve lived through. And, well, I’m not too keen on remembering.
That being said, today’s entry reads “Start of Operation Desert Storm – 1991.” Do you remember what you were doing on this date in 1991? I do. I remember because I was being trained in how to look for suspicious packages on commercial air flights. It was crazy. It was scary. And I remember it as if it happened yesterday.
I’m glad I’m not a flight attendant these days. I can’t imagine the required training for today’s crews. I can’t imagine the fear. I guess that’s why I don’t like the Italian deli’s direction with their calendars. I don’t know. Maybe next year I’ll just go out and buy myself a kitchen calendar. The freebie is a bit too negative for me.
Several cups of tea with some Iraqi and Kuwaiti classmates in the Kuwaiti’s apartment, Athens, GA. We were all more-or-less outcasts from the engineering school (two ragheads and a stoner 10-years-older than anyone else in the classes), so we bagged school to watch CNN until I had to leave for work at Entomology where I reared corn borers and boll weevils for the professor who got me into real distance running; it was on the walk to the lab that the situation struck me as surreal, albeit only briefly. On the run that day (I had already started a running journal) I hoofed it out to the State Bot Gardens and on one of the passes by the Broad River I spotted a pair of Otters far from the sea; apparently, I had the Talking Heads on a Walkman during this.
It shouldn’t be such a good memory. Things got progressively more shitty for (and between) these two buddies as the weeks progressed, but for me it was a grand day. Thanks for that…I can just about smell the decaying vegetation in the Gardens and the larvae media and the alcohol lamps as I type this.
Always happy to remind folks of the odors of decaying anything!
Odours…I’m nearly British, now.
Odours…I’m nearly British, now. Sorry if this is a dupe (I blame your site’s robot)
I blame my site’s robot, too. And I’ve never even met the guy.