Tag Archives: aging

March 19, 2012, 3:43 pm

Skirt Day 2012

Photo by Flickr CC user Joseph Gray; model, Sara Foust

So my friend Tim comes to visit. I don’t let just anybody into the office today because I am in official Grading Hell (all grades done, but not all comments completed–this is how I torture myself), but Tim is not just anybody. He’s the Knight in Shining Technical Armor. He’s the one who rescues everybody in my Department (but especially me) when strange intergalactic stuff enters my hard drive. Or whatever it is that happens when my computer stops working.

Anyhow, today Tim stops by not because I have called, miserable and cajoling or even calling with an offer of homemade food (which I do often use as an excuse to keep him happy and to grab his company) but because he wants to announce, with some bitterness, that it is Rokjesdage.

I think maybe he had…

March 1, 2012, 11:05 pm

Didn’t I Hate You in High School?

By Gina Barreca

I’m on Facebook and a name I recognize comes up asking for a “friend request.” Usually I love these invitations: they’re great.

The only ones that make me panic are ones sent by people I knew, sort of, from my youth.

So when I see that there’s a name I once knew, I sink into down into my office chair and feel awkward, weird, sweaty, and fourteen years old. It’s not a name I actually remember because there’s another name tacked onto the end. It’s always the photograph that gets me in these kinds of invitations. She’ll have pictures of herself standing next to her dog or her kids or her man or her woman. Sometimes she’s chipper and happy; sometimes she looks like she wants to hang herself. Either way, I’m still panicking.

I recognize the face, the jawline, the shape of the eyes, and the tilt of the head. The memory is buried deep but although I have to dig for it, …