not the writing assignment

it was one of those weekends during which you make a realization about your past that profoundly impacts your present and at the same time learn how to perform basic vacuum cleaner maintenance ... beyond the bag change.

it all began as many things do: with dog hair.

but why would i start with the floors when i could less easily start with the closets? well, one closet specifically. the one that couldn't be opened without the fear of blunt head trauma. the one that hasn't gotten any attention since the water heater died ... and before that, since i bought the place.

inside said closet, i dodged and weaved my way around a box of desk supplies, a mass of cords and wires half the size of zoey, a keyboard, a printer, a handful of retired purses, a dog crate, wrapping paper, a water bed mattress, and a porch swing. i kid you not.

the most interesting finds, tho, were the folders upon folders of college papers. as an english major, i wrote a lot. to complete the curriculum, i occasionally had to take two and three literature courses at a time. what a good idea.

i remember one stellar term near the end of it all when marcia and i took nothing but lit classes, and two of them were parallel topics ... we wrote daily journals, mid-terms, finals, long papers, short papers, daily journals, daily journals, and daily journals.

so, when i say i wrote a lot, i compare that output to, say, aaron’s DVD collection ... except that my collection only took four years to accumulate, it doesn't have to ever be alphabetized, and there are no duplicates. well, at least not many duplicates.

i also compare the quality of those papers to the quality of aaron's DVDs. there's a decent Criterion contingent, but there are many, many Shriek of the Mutliated resemblances.

sitting in the closet, reading all the red ink, i realized that i spent my college years applying myself just enough to courteously get by.

that hurt. most especially when the flood of awareness swept over me, and my head hit the door.

B, B+, B+, B. in the stacks of papers, i found one solid C, and it was well deserved: "please make sure your essays are at least 500 words long." yeah, man ... freshman composition. shortly thereafter, i declared my major. perhaps i should have done a little more thinking, but i was just a kid. how could i be expected to make an intelligent and important decision then?

honestly, now that i'm an "adult" how can i be expected to make an intelligent and important decision? am i still aiming to get by? the answers are i don't see how and yes, respectfully.

do you know that a small but essential plastic nub fell off one of the venetian blinds in my living room last week? of course not ... but i'm sure you know what i did about it. that's right … i opened the blind using the pull string rather than the twisty thing.

do i plan to replace that blind? of course not ... that is, not until mother visits and insists that it be replaced.

there i go again ... just getting by.

*sigh*