truepenny | nostalgia bunnies

So the nearest FedEx outpost is in the next small town over. Along the state highway between here and there, there is an honest-to-god pumpkin patch. Which, you know, no big deal, except I've been reading Peanuts cartoons since I was old enough to read, and I'd never seen a pumpkin patch before.

Sheltered life or something.

So anyway, there's a pumpkin patch. And I drive by it these days wondering how sincere it is.

And while I'm in the FedEx outpost, filling out the little form so as to be able to send The Virtu to my editor in New York, "The Time of My Life" comes on the radio. Which is, of course, one of the most magnificently cheeseball songs of the magnificently cheeseball 80s, and off the Dirty Dancing soundtrack no less.

But it has this absolutely specific association for me, and for that reason, even though it is the cheeseball of cheeseballs, I get that stupid little tug at my heart when I hear it. Namely, the 1988 Winter Olympics, and Elizabeth Manley's silver. She skated to "The Time of My Life," not for the competition, but in the thing afterwards, where the skaters do what they want, dance the things they love, and Scott Hamilton does his back-flip. You know. And Manley's performance was a love letter to Calgary and to Canada, and I got chills watching her. I get chills thinking about it, even now. And I know it's silly, but sometimes that doesn't even matter. It still makes me want to stand up and cheer.

And I guess that's appropriate, in a backwards sort of way, because just at the moment, I have something to cheer about.

The Virtu is on its way to New York. I met my deadline.