From The Rum Diary by Hunter S Thompson
The college I went to starts classes earlier than most colleges. As a result, it got out early and graduation was early. I'm not sure what reminded me of this and I'm also not sure why I kept pondering this so many years later. Eighteen years is not a significant anniversary. Or, it isn't a number most would consider worthy of reflect. Multiples of five get all the attention, why celebrate 25 years instead of setting the alarm clock for 6:47 in the morning. I'm not sure why the snooze alarm on most clocks resets the alarm for nine minutes, but I appreciate that it isn't 10.
With another school year over for nameless and faceless students at my (or any) college, I'm struck by how small decisions can have huge consequences. This may seem obvious in some cases - take a different route to the library and get in a car accident. In other cases it is less obvious - if my first car had been something other than what it was, I might not have graduated college (there is a serpentine path that almost makes this a near certainty).
What I didn't fully understand was how big some big decisions where at the time. I'm sure this continues.
When I was nearing graduation, I started interviewing for jobs related to my degree. I was working at the time as an auto mechanic and doing reasonably well at it. Many of the job offers I was getting were for far less money than I could make as a mechanic. College was looking like a poor financial decision for a time.
Then I got three job offers any of which I would have taken in the absence of the others. They were still for less money than I was making, but long term prospects were better and as much as I like the hands-on work of auto-repair I knew I could make more. I still sometimes miss the hands-on work, but I don't miss burning my hands on exhaust pipes.
I thought I really wanted to work for a large company, so I took the offer from the largest company and moved a few hundred miles away. I didn't see it as a long-term or even an intermediate-term choice. I saw it as something to start with, "I can always look for something else in a few years."
Nearly two decades later, I'm still at the same company. I've moved around a bit, but the idea of quitting to find something else isn't so appealing in the current job market. Looking at life in entirety it wouldn't even seem appealing in a good job market, although I know many people job hop often.
Sometimes I think my job makes me crazy. Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if I had taken one of the other offers. Or stayed wrenchin'. Could be better, or not...
This isn't necessarily a bad thing or a good thing - more ambivalent than anything else. History is a grammar exercise where we find the present tense and the past perfect.
They just found the skeleton of a young woman a few miles away from my house. She had been missing for about a year and a half. She left her home in a nearby suburb with almost nothing and vanished, no note or sign of a struggle. On reporting that the skeleton was found, the local news anchor said that "the mystery is solved" (it isn't) but that "nobody knows yet what happened" (someone does). Odds are high it was someone close to her. Stranger abductions are rare events.
According to the FBI, there are around 600,000 missing persons in the US in a year. A surprising number of them are not runaway kids. There are about as many "closed" missing persons cases a year as new ones. Closed can mean a skeleton at a dump site. According to the Justice Department, at any one time there are approximately 100,000 missing persons cases and 40,000 sets of unidentified human remains. Sorting through numbers on missing people from trustable sources is difficult without knowing the definitions used. But, the numbers are staggering. Over the course of a few years, hundreds of thousands of people disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.
And yet, anybody who is reading this (anybody who can read this) is in the most fortunate few relative to the 100-odd billion people to have ever lived.
And yet, anybody who is reading this (anybody who can read this) is in the most fortunate few relative to the 100-odd billion people to have ever lived.
There is a thread of craziness in everyone - I'm convinced. The thread may never manifest itself outside of riding a roller-coaster, "...dare I eat a peach for the fuzz." For most, there is a stronger bit of life mayhem which is probably healthy.
In a small number of humans, the thread becomes a rope too strong to tear away from and the tug turns to a pull and goes in a terrible direction. Read a few of the stories of the millions of missing persons and there is an unavoidable tendency to question humanity. Read of some of the closed missing persons cases and the belief that depravity underlies many people is validated.
Life is seen at the surface, but there is an undercurrent, often ugly, always present and generally unacknowledged.
Looking back on the nearly two decades since graduation there are very few constants in my life. One of the only constants though has been my Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Thinking back, I think I bought the coffee maker in 1991, about this time of year after college classes ended when I moved into my first apartment. I can't think of too many other things I had in 1991 that I still have now.
Since I bought my cheap 4-cup Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffee maker:
- I have moved seven times.
- I have had seven dogs (four I miss terribly, three I still have).
- I have had approximately 15 cars.
- I have had seven motorcycles.
- I have had at least six computers.
- I have been through approximately 39 states and 6 Canadian Provinces or Territories.
- I have had at least nine lawn mowers.
- Only three mobile phones.
- But one coffee maker.
Have a hot cup of Peet's.
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