Found this little bit of memory on a blog I stumbled across, Samosas for One.
Instantly I was back in the room of a fellow freshman, a guy from Texas, I think, and I remember a big Texas flag hanging on the wall (I don’t think I ever went into someone from Texas’s room without noticing a flag, now that I think about it). I think at least 15 of us were crowded into the room, and we were watching the premiere of the show that we’d watch all through college. Because we were, after all, the class of 1996.
I’m sure I was wearing a worn-in LL Bean flannel shirt, and I’m sure one or more of my future roommates was with me. I think we were drinking grain alcohol punch of some kind out of plastic cups, or maybe warm beer. After the show was over we likely all traipsed the long walk to the Street together, trying to find a club that would let a marauding group of freshmen in.
It seems like yesterday and a million years ago, that night that could have been a hundred others, but that this opening sequence reminded me of. As Anu quotes in her blog, there is a line about people having two birthplaces: the first being where they were born, and the second being where they find out who they are. I’ve been thinking about that a lot and I struggle with the latter point. I think that discovery is a process, and therefore that I can’t pinpoint a single second “birthplace.” Rather, it is strewn among a small group of places and people, who either witnessed or participated in the process of my becoming who I am. And the process is very much still underway.