that the you in the past is looking out for the you in the future?

Case in point:

I went to bed really late tonight (well, late for me) after e-mailing a friend about Nemo. And I lay there. And I lay there. And I couldn't sleep. And the back of my mind kept thinking that for some odd reason I had my high school's 1992 graduation ceremony on tape where Nemo gave his valedictorian address.

Now, my logical brain said, "Maggie--why would you have that? You weren't even home to tape it; you were there singing in the choir."

But my hindbrain (the smart part of my brain) said, "No, you taped it."

So I hiked it downstairs and pulled out the boxes of tapes from my youth, knowing that a) even if I had recorded the graduation that b) it was probably back in the room I grew up in.

So I pulled out boxes, and pulled out boxes, and then pulled out this other box and thought to myself, "Here." And I unwrapped it and pulled out a few tapes and there, lo and behold, was this tape labeled, "Graduation 1992".

My eyes popped out of my head. My heart quit beating. I quit breathing. My heart and lungs still aren't working, one hour later.¹

My sixteen-year-old self had taped that ceremony because she was like that: a pack rat chronicler of her life during the first half of her teenage years who still had kept around a few odd mementos of this time.

Of course, being a hip person of the 21st century, I don't have a tape player in my house. That's right--all these tapes and no player. Actually, somewhere, is a Walkman, but I'm a bit clueless as to its current whereabouts. Still packed in a box, I suppose...

Anyway, I grabbed my keys to Rice's car and went out to the garage to listen to the tape, to find Nemo's address.

The tape was not rewound, and began playing towards the end of Side B, or perhaps the end of Side A. I haven't determined this small detail yet. But whichever side it is, whatever the location on the tape, it began right at Nemo's speech, with Charlie Manson trying to pick cherries from a cherry tree that he will soon CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! down.

And suddenly I was sixteen again, in an entirely too warm red robe with this awful gold neck decoration doohickey encircling my neck. There's thunder, and a light sprinkling of rain. The choir has just finished singing "Everything I Do, I Do it for You", which was the number one song the previous year. I am glad we are done. I'm sitting next to Mandy, and Nemo is speaking, and it's hard not to laugh and laugh because he's so horribly witty and funny. And I am hoping that my recorder, which is sitting in the living room by my dad's brown leather recliner, is taping correctly and hasn't screwed up. I am recording this event because I have some vague notion that prosperity might care. Whose prosperity I'm not sure I exactly knew, but someone was going to care that I just sang "Everything I Do..." and that people were graduating from Minico tonight.

Bless that sixteen-year-old self. I don't know if Nemo's family has a copy of his graduation address, but if not I suspect they'll want one.

This tape is going to be transferred to CD, by golly, as soon as I can get it done.

By the way, I totally did listen to us sing "Everything I Do...", and we sounded not fabulous, but not horrible either--just like you'd expect a high school choir singing Brian Adams to sound--and I totally rocked out in the front of my husband's car, clad in my jammies while it rained and my hair flipped around.

Someone had to get something out of that performance.

1 This is seriously the only part of this account that I exaggerated. My eyes only popped out of my head a little, and my breathing and heart only stopped for a couple of seconds.