It was 20 years ago, but not today.
Part of our fall obligation, as Knight-Wallace Fellows, is to prepare a 30-minute presentation for our fellow Fellows. Topic: Ourselves. Yep. Half an hour of chitchat about ourselves. Just kill me now.
It’s pretty wide open. You don’t have to stand up and tell your life story. One guy played the cello, another woman decorated the house southwestern style and sang praise to her native Texas — these are all stories from past years, which we were told to give us the gist and an idea. (Why is it always Texans who do this? You’d never catch a Coloradan preaching yee-hah and cowboy boots to a bunch of people in Michigan.) There’s a schedule for these things, and I go next week. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but I expect there will be visual aids. I went over to the Media Union today with a stack of old slides and scanned them. This is one I actually sort of like — the box said “summer ’83,” so that’s me at 25. What was I thinking, parting my hair that far over with a forehead like mine?
I think I have my theme: “Good times, bad hair.”
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Dick Walker said on October 14th, 2003 at 11:59 pm
Well, hell, Nancy, I thought I’d explained this to you once before, but maybe not. The reason we sing the praises of Texas, especially when elsewhere, is simple national pride. And we don’t particularly mind if y’all do it back. If you feel like it, that is.
Not long after I moved here from Florida, a native explained to me that I shouldn’t ask a man where he’s from. “If he’s from Texas, he’ll get around to telling you — and if he’s not, why would you want to embarrass him?”
But my bumper sticker says “I wasn’t born in Texas, but then neither was Sam Houston.”
That’s a great picture of you — and what appears to be a fine runabout.
alex said on October 15th, 2003 at 4:01 am
Dammit, Nance, you should’ve been my fag hag. Never could get anyone to do outdoorsy stuff, unless you consider sidewalk cafes outdoorsy.
Michael Golden said on October 15th, 2003 at 9:00 am
Picture’s great! You look like you’re mooning over your new boyfriend! I’ll bet Alan would like to get his hands on that old wooden boat.
mgolden
Nance said on October 15th, 2003 at 9:42 am
Don’t think Alan would want that one — it leaked like a sieve. It belonged to some friends of mine in the Upper Peninsula, and later met its doom during one of those famous fall storms (cue the Gordon Lightfoot music, please), when it was ripped from its mooring in a boathouse and thrown onto the rocks.
It was later replaced by a Boston Whaler, the finest outboard watercraft in the world.
Marci said on October 15th, 2003 at 9:51 am
Heh. That’s a nice picture, Nance! I didn’t even notice your forehead, but maybe that’s because mine is the size of a small billboard.
ashley said on October 15th, 2003 at 12:09 pm
Coquettish. That’s how I’m describing that picture of you on the boat with the Beavis-like forehead. Coquettish. A nice word. Not like troika, but nice nonetheless. Perhaps for your half hour, you could discuss your breasts. I know you’ve written a few treatises on them, and here’s your chance to delve into the exciting world of performance art!
And yes, Texans, as well as most Southerners, have intense national pride. Note also Dick’s use of “y’all”. Instead of the repellant “youse”, we have made up for the inadequacies of English by using “you” for singular, “y’all” for plural, and “all y’all” for plural collective. Yee hah, indeed.