{"id":1297,"date":"2011-12-18T13:48:23","date_gmt":"2011-12-18T21:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2011-12-18T13:48:25","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T21:48:25","slug":"flashback-part-43-of-nghost-of-christmas-past-part-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=1297","title":{"rendered":"flashback, part 43 of n\/Ghost of Christmas Past, part 6"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Dec. 26, 2005&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>Well that was interesting.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve just gone through a time warp. I have spent the better part of the last five hours digging through a footlocker stuffed full of my old paperwork, from junior-high to the middle of Vanderbilt &#8211; in short, everything between &#8220;hey, girls are interesting&#8221; and &#8220;subscribe LISTSERV&#8221;. I generated two huge trash bags and most of a good-sized box, parsing into &#8220;keep this&#8221; and &#8220;trash that,&#8221; although half of the stuff to keep should probably actually be trashed. If any of you are Doctor Who fans, I think I may have just finished regenerating.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a very surreal experience, knowing that all this stuff is at least ten years old and probably more like fifteen, but what&#8217;s more surreal is the way that I had that big needle-scratch in my mind when the wife came into the room and I realized that it wasn&#8217;t actually 1988, or 1993, or&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In high school, you always think you&#8217;re all alone, that you&#8217;re special and misunderstood and whatever. The really disappointing thing is realizing that you were just exactly like everybody else\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><br \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Dec. 27, 2005&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026the process of weeding out the cruft of half a life ago (literally, this coming spring, half a life ago) has done some really weird things to my psyche. All I can say is that I am clearly not the man I was, and not just the way that Christopher Eccleston is not Jon Pertwee. If you track back to 1988-90, I have gotten almost everything I ever wanted &#8211; granted, it took a hell of a long time, and a lot of what I got was not what I expected, and I have since lost some of what I got, and a couple of the things I just grew out of needing. But for better or worse, here I am. I don&#8217;t even have anything I wanted for Christmas and didn&#8217;t get.<\/p>\n<p>God willing, maybe this means that some of my thought-processes and reflexes and instincts that were wet-wired back in the dark days of adolescence will go away now, or at least grow up. I&#8217;m not counting on it, though. I&#8217;d settle for just being able to make the mortgage on time and for my car lasting one more year&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Dec. 26, 2005&#8230; Well that was interesting. I&#8217;ve just gone through a time warp. I have spent the better part of the last five hours digging through a footlocker stuffed full of my old paperwork, from junior-high to the middle of Vanderbilt &#8211; in short, everything between &#8220;hey, girls are interesting&#8221; and &#8220;subscribe LISTSERV&#8221;. &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=1297\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;flashback, part 43 of n\/Ghost of Christmas Past, part 6&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1298,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1297\/revisions\/1298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}