Six Year Meme

[alexxkay]

My memory for this sort of thing sucks, but here's some guesses.

Six years ago, I had regretfully come to terms with the fact that, despite what seemed like a strong mutual attraction, kestrell had explicitly decided not to become involved with me. My former girlfriend, 43duckies had just moved out of Melville Keep, though she had broken up with me many months prior. Now there was only *one* ex-girlfriend (lightinmotion) living in the house. This was a big improvement over the situation a few months earlier, of living with two ex-es while trying to romance the *new* housemate.

I was working intermittently in the games industry, having gigs with Irrational, Impressions, and a dot.com startup around this time.

This may also have been the first year that I was part of the panel programming at Arisia.

Six years earlier, I was working on directing "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" for an SCA event. I was also wondering if I should cancel it, due to the big brouhaha with the Board of Directors.

lightinmotion had moved in with me not too long before that, and we were still pretty happy together. pamelina still owned Melville Keep then.

No idea where I was working, probably a temp clerical gig of some sort.

Six years earlier, I had just graduated from Brandeis, and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I was still living in student slum housing, behind the grocery store.

I was working at Orchard's Bookstore, which had a cool gaming and comics focus, but which depressingly got most of its cash flow from lottery tickets and cigarettes.

I was dating some people ocassionally, but with no long-term romantic prospects. All of them were married to other people or otherwise inacessible.

Six years before that, I was halfway through my first year at Worcester Academy, and beginning to really come into my own as an individual, now that I finally had a supportive environment and a real peer group. (I think this was a bit before mssrcrankypants started there. He's the only one of that cohort that I'm still in touch with, though I often think about the others.)

My geometry teacher insisted that I take off my Doctor Who scarf while in his class, but I wore it *everywhere* else, even in the warmer months.

Somewhere around this time would have been ReKon, the first ever of what would later become known as LARPs.

I had just started reading Cerebus, which was itself just starting what later was named Church & State. I owned every Doctor Who novelisation that had been published to date. _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ had not yet made it to the states in book form, but I had recorded the radio plays off of NPR and listened to them obsessively. Between that, Doctor Who, and Monty Python, I spontaneously developed an english accent.

Six years before that, there was Bicentennial Fever. I have a vague memory (and some old photos) of seeing some Tall Ships. My dad the sometime professional photographer had bought me my first camera, so I have many not-quite-focused black&white photos from family trips around this time.

We lived on Tupelo Road in Worcester. There were other kids in the neighborhood, who I sort-of was friends with, for want of any one better. They were all hopelessly mundane.

Around this time, I would have had my first Game Design moment, by codifying the local rules for Flashlight Tag in print. This was part of an attempt (partially successful) to prevent all our neighborhood games from ending in shouting matches

This would have been the year I was in fourth grade. I don't personally remember anything of what happened there, apparently the trauma was too great. Mom told the story in later years that I had come home early in the school year and reported that the teacher didn't actually know the material -- but that everything would work out because I had helpfully drawn up a lesson plan for the teacher, so that she could keep ahead of the class. While I was definitely a gifted child in many areas, my knowledge of human psychology was rather behind the curve; I had no idea of the amount of resentment I was provoking in a figure who would have supreme authority over me during school hours for the rest of the year. As I said, I've blocked out all memory of what happened.

Six years earlier, I would have been 2.5 years old, so I *really* don't remember much of that. We might still have been living in Chicago, I think.

Six years earlier, I wasn't.

Comments

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Why six years? Why not five or seven? *ponder*

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

My guess is that it was started by someone who dislikes pseudo-numerology.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

It might be a classical allusion. There are several medieval sources that map a human life onto the months of the year by having each month correspond to a six year period. That comes to 72 years, pretty close to the biblical "three score and ten".

[juldea.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I love finding out that things that seem so random can in fact have a deeper meaning. :)

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

Bicentennial Fever

I started doing the meme as 2006, 2000, etc, then realized this was 2007. :)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

OK, so Bicentennial Fever was starting to slack off by then. It did go well into '77, at least where I lived.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

I had regretfully come to terms with the fact that, despite what seemed like a strong mutual attraction, [info]kestrell had explicitly decided not to become involved with me.

So did she bonk you over the head, or what, to get you to understand this wasn't the case?

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

You misunderstand, it *was* the case. I had made an explicit pass at her, and she had turned me down, explaining that she no longer wanted the people she dated and the people she lived with to be overlapping sets. I calmly (if regretfully) accepted this, and stopped bugging her. This acceptance that "no means no" was apparently a new experience for her, and it quite confused her for a while.

A few months later, she decided that, no matter how much the rational side of her brain thought it was a bad idea, the other side of her brain was still going (and I quote) "But I wanna!" So she did :)

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Ah; this was the "not being evil" plan I think I've heard you mention -- actually respecting her wishes, and so on.

You sneaky ethical guy! ;)

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ had not yet made it to the states in book form

To be verified? If I've counted your sixes correctly, you put this at 1983; I'm pretty sure I remember picking up my copy of the first Hitchiker's book at a con in 1979. Of course, my memory could be wrong, or the dealer at the con may have had a British publication; I can't verify right now, since my book is somewhere in the landfill that is D's bedroom :-)

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

As mentioned at the top of the post, my memory for dates of things is very bad. And, as elizabear surmised, I was off by a year, and talking about 1982, not 1983.

A quick google show that the Guide was first published in book form in 1979. I'm ~90% sure that it was at least a year after that before it made it to the US, though certainly con dealers of that era were importing UK books (that being how I aquired many of the afore-mentioned Doctor who novelisations). I'm 100% sure that I had encountered the radio series several months before the first book hit the US. But it seems likely from this research that these events were in 1979 or 1980.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

And I know I had bought the book shortly(?) before NPR ran the radio series - I hadn't heard of the series yet when I picked up the book, it just looked like it might be fun. So I think we're zeroing in on the right couple years here.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I should note that I first heard the radio show as part of an eclectic variety show (on WBUR maybe?), before it received national US distribution as its own show.

[jducoeur]

Six years earlier, I was working on directing "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" for an SCA event.

Pestle! Ach -- I knew I must be forgetting *something* in there...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

See other comments -- there's no guarantee that I was at all *accurate* in dating that here :-/