Z is for Zenith

Once upon a time, there was a television--a Zenith, to be exact. It was a small TV, but it served a big purpose: entertaining Dana the College Student. It spent its days on a much-too-big TV stand in her much-too-small dorm room, dutifully fulfilling its destiny.

Television-watching freedom at last!
Image courtesy of Rebecca Merrett,
rgbstock.com

I loved that little thirteen-inch Zenith. My parents had bought it for me around Christmas time of my senior year. They had given me a choice between a microwave and a television, but there really was no contest. I figured I could always go to the cafeteria for meals or eat cereal or ramen noodles cooked in my hot pot in my room. What I couldn't always do was watch what I wanted to on the floor's one TV. There was just too much competition, and unless I wanted to wrestle for my right to watch Beverly Hills, 90210, I knew it was best to steer clear of the common room.

Looking back, I'm surprised I managed to get any homework done once I started sharing my single with the Zenith. I guess it helped that I didn't have cable and was able to pick up only one network, NBC. Still, NBC featured some great programming back in the "olden" days of 1993 and 1994, and I remember watching Seinfeld, ER, Mad About You, and F•R•I•E•N•D•S--all great shows that I still love today.

After I graduated from college, I packed up my TV and went on to graduate school. That tiny TV looked even smaller in my brand-new apartment, but it remained a treasured possession. In fact, I guess you could say I had formed a sentimental attachment to that Zenith. Did I refuse to go out with my friends in favor of staying home with my TV? Of course not. I'm sentimental, not antisocial. Still, that TV had been with me through a lot: it had helped me stay awake during all-night cram sessions, consoled me after fights with boyfriends, helped take my mind off worries that would threaten to keep me from sleep... I used to say that I had two possessions I would do my best to rescue if there was ever a fire: my Skylark and my Zenith, both of which offered me a much-needed escape from life whenever I needed it.

But one day I noticed that the Zenith wasn't working as well as it once had. It turned fickle at the worst possible moments--like during the many but crucial "Will-this-patient-live-or-die" scenes on ER. Sometimes it displayed a picture but had no sound; sometimes there was sound but no picture. I feared I was losing it (the TV, not my mind, although I have friends who would beg to differ). I started babying it, talking to it, cajoling it, even giving it a little slap when it wouldn't listen to me. I didn't know it then, of course, but, for better or for worse--and minus the slapping--that TV was helping me hone my future parenting skills.

No matter my efforts, though, the Zenith continued to decline, yet somehow I couldn't part with it--not even when I finished graduate school and packed up a U-Haul to move 1,300 miles away to Nebraska to teach. Yes, that old, broken-down, works-only-part-of-the-time-but-still-isn't-quite-dead TV made the trip with me.

I know what you're thinking: I was crazy to keep the thing, right? Why didn't I just go out and buy a new one? That would have been the logical solution, I admit, but I've always been much too sentimental about things, and I have an especially hard time parting with anything given to me by someone I love. To add to that, I was moving far away from home and family, from the Midwest to the Plains, from security to uncertainty... No wonder I wanted to cling to something from my past.

So I moved that TV into my new (rented) house. It wasn't long before it wouldn't work at all, but instead of tossing it out, I boxed it up and put it in the basement, where it wouldn't have to see its replacement and where I could still keep my memories. It wasn't until nearly seven years later, as we were packing up yet another U-Haul, this time for my move to Wisconsin, that I allowed my dad to throw that Zenith away. I couldn't do it myself, and somehow it seemed fitting that one of the people who gave it to me was the one to get rid of it. I guess that having it live in the basement for all those years made me realize that I could live without it--and more importantly, that living without it didn't mean that I would be living without the memories.

And that was a big realization right there. I had come to my zenith in regard to my Zenith, just as we are now at the zenith of this challenge. I'm sad that the challenge is over; I had so much fun meeting other bloggers and enjoyed writing to a theme. I'll save the rest of my thoughts for my reflections post on May 7, but I want to say now that I appreciate each and every one of you who takes the time to read my thoughts. Reading your comments has been the highlight of my day. Thank you!




So how about you? Have you ever owned a Zenith or formed a sentimental attachment to an object? (Please tell me I'm not the only one!)

S is for Skylark

I have a soft spot in my heart for birds. The birds know this, so they stop by pretty regularly for the old bread and stale Cheerios I often throw out on the grass in the backyard.

I'm not sure my husband is so thrilled about the way I toss food around, but I love watching the robins and sparrows and the occasional blue jays and cardinals as they enjoy their snacks. The birds and I have a deal: I feed them, and they sing for me. That's fair, right? There are few sounds I enjoy more than birdsong, especially early in the morning.

Dana and the Skylark, circa 1994
I believe this picture was taken the day I bought the car.

But this post is about one bird in particular: the skylark. Or, rather, it's not. Because as much as I enjoy birds--and the skylark, although I've never seen one, seems like a nice one--this post is about another favorite skylark: my 1990 Buick Skylark, to be exact.

The Skylark was my first car. I bought it when I was in graduate school in 1994. Up until that point, I'd either walked everywhere or bummed rides from friends, so owning this car meant I finally had some real freedom. I drove everywhere, even to places I could have walked to, and I appointed myself the Official Driver for all Graduate School Students in English. (Okay, I didn't do that. But I did drive everyone to Hardee's once.)

I loved that car. It was a blue, four-door sedan with only the tiniest bit of rust, and I drove it until it just about fell apart. The day I traded it in for my second car, a 1995 Buick Century (yes, I see a pattern here!) was a sad, sad day. I have pictures of that moment as well, but let's concentrate on happy things, shall we?

All these years later, I still think about that car. I guess the memory of any first in life is important--even if it is just a vehicle.


What was your first car? Did it have any special meaning for you?

Those were the days...

Today's 100 words:

I long for the extensive intellectual discussions about literature and art that I used to have with others when I was in graduate school. We all had the same focus--the same love--and we could pitch words and ideas and theories with no fear of boring the people around us. We could share our research and not fear that the listener's eyes would glaze over with boredom or that he would clean his nails and stare at the wall in apathy as we talked. I share these things online now more than off. I miss being face-to-face.

My own sun

Today's 100 words:

In graduate school, I dated a guy I thought was the love of my life. When he said he didn't want to be with me anymore, my whole world crumbled--I couldn't eat or sleep... Even one of my professors remarked later--after I'd finally gotten over the guy--that I had been looking gray and sick for a while and he was glad to see me looking healthy and happy again. My mistake was not loving the guy but letting him rule my world--allowing him to be my sun. I truly hope my daughter never does the same.

Decisions

I wrote today's 100 words about being a high school senior asked to decide on a college major. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Up until that point in my life, I had already changed my mind a million times: I'd wanted to be a singer, an archaeologist, an orthodontist (back in my braces days), a journalist... I had no idea what to tell the people who asked. I finally decided on broadcast journalism as my major but ended up switching to English by the end of my first semester. English stuck; I went on to graduate school for a master's, then taught college English and journalism classes for several years. I've never regretted the switch!

This morning's 100 words:

All the college applications had a place for us to select a major, and I remember how weird it seemed that I, a seventeen-year-old high school senior, was being asked to make what seemed to be such a life-altering decision--a huge, can't-go-back, set-in-stone decision--and I felt so ill-equipped to even know, to even pretend to have an inkling of an idea about what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. I was facing a test I hadn't studied for. I didn't know the answer.

Introspection

Today's 100 words:

It's difficult to stand up for your beliefs when you're young--or at least it was for me. I abandoned so much of the woman I was when I entered graduate school; I became a different person, began ignoring my knowledge of what was right and what was wrong, started becoming someone I didn't like very much. But once I was on that roller coaster--once I set off down that path--I found it hard to stop, and it's only just now, years and years later, that I'm beginning to come back to my beliefs--and to myself.

Filling in some gaps

I wrote this 100-words entry after I asked my visiting friend, Tyler, where we had met. An entry I wrote last week shows that his memory is better than mine!

I asked my friend Tyler where we met, and he said that it was in our Milton class, not the Arthurian literature class, as I had thought. I remember now: Professor Andrews had us move our chairs into a horseshoe shape, lined along the edges of the walls, and Tyler sat across from me but closer to the front. He said that we were in the Arthurian lit class together the next semester, which I now remember to be true. Whereas I despised the Arthurian class, I enjoyed Milton. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained--important works.

All roads lead somewhere--even if it's nowhere

This morning's 100 words:

Tyler, my friend from graduate school, will be visiting for a few days. I don't remember how we met--perhaps it was through a mutual friend. More likely we met in the Arthurian literature class we both took. I have no idea why I enrolled in that class. I love literature--I was a lit major--but I confess that the Arthurian tradition bores me to tears. So though I'm not sure why I was taking the class, it was probably how I met Tyler--and it led me to Rob, who I thought was the love of my life...


**Tyler arrived a few hours ago. It's great to see him again!

Seldom a lightbulb moment

Today's 100 words:

Story ideas don't come easy to me. They never have. And nonfiction ideas arrive slowly as well. When it was time to write my thesis in graduate school, it took several long meetings with my thesis director before I could settle on a project. Some people are fortunate to see ideas in everything: they read an article, hear something on television, or have an unusual dream, and suddenly they're brainstorming their answers to the what-ifs. I envy them. Ideas come slowly to me, thick like molasses, and it takes a lot of shaping to form them into something viable.

Homebody

Today's 100 words:

Growing up, I was always somewhat of a homebody. I attended a college that was only about an hour and a half away from my hometown, and I had no intention of beginning my career too far away from my family. As my graduation from graduate school neared, though, I realized that college teaching jobs were scarce in Upper Michigan, and, finding myself carried forward by the momentum of my friends' enthusiasm for the job hunt, I applied for work all over the country. The result: I was offered and accepted a job in Nebraska, so very far from home.

Nonsense

This morning's 100 words, this time about one of those odd memories that for some reason sticks in my mind:

H was a fellow teaching assistant in graduate school whose office was across the hall from mine. We had met on the college newspaper staff a year earlier, and although we weren't close friends, we did talk occasionally. One morning she burst through my office door and collapsed in a smiling heap on the floor. She then began to tell me--very excitedly--about the night she had spent with B, another TA. I thought it was strange that she was telling me and not a close friend, but I guess I must have been the only one around.

My, how times change

Today's 100 words:

I'm only thirty-eight, but until I started graduate school in 1994, I did all my writing assignments on typewriters. Computer labs were available at my college, of course, but the professors didn't require that we use them, and since I had a typewriter in my dorm room, I typed. As a graduate student, however, I had my own office, which was furnished with a tiny, medieval-by-today's-standards computer, and I abandoned my typewriter. When I started my teaching career two years later, I discovered that the computer in my office was so high-tech that I hardly knew how to use it.

Back to the past

Yesterday's 100 words:

I find it fun to speculate on what period in my life I would return to if time travel were possible. I think I'd choose graduate school, as those two years were some of the most tumultuous yet fulfilling ones of my life. They were years of firsts: first apartment, first car, first truly adult relationship, first time I really felt like an independent woman. There are things I would like to change, of course--some of the decisions I made and the paths I took. But overall, those two years were fun years--growing years--and well worth living again.

Dazed, disheveled, and utterly confused

Today's 100 words:

I've been oversleeping so much lately, which isn't like me. I must be more exhausted than I thought. I know I haven't been getting enough sleep since my second child was born, but I didn't realize how utterly weary I'd become.

I remember oversleeping only a few times in my life. Once happened in graduate school. I was a teaching assistant with an 8 a.m. composition class. I'd stayed at Rob's apartment the night before, and for whatever reason, the alarm didn't ring. Somehow, though, I made it to class on time, dazed, disheveled, and utterly confused.