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January, 1994
Oct. 23rd, 2002 01:05 pmI just remembered something.
Today at lunch I was sitting in the break room/kitchen area at work, and I was eating the lunch I made the night before: baked chicken, rice, and black beans. I thought to myself, 'black beans sure don't smell vile like black-eyed peas do.'
That brought on a memory of January, 1994, sitting in the Corner Theater of the Stevens Building on NIU's campus in Dekalb. I am up at the booth, running sound and taking cue notes for our upcoming shows in England, and my professor Gene suddenly warns us that he's about to crack open a container of black-eyed peas.
A few of the grad students groan, and I'm not at all aware of why until the smell of those beans wafts back to me. Take bean smell, and just ... multiply it. It's not a bad smell, right? But it's just not something you actively inhale, willingly, you see. It's this wall of pungent bean scent and it won't give up. It will beat you down.
It never occurred to me, until right then at lunch that he was eating them for luck. For the New Year.
It's funny to me how memories can make a lot more sense as time passes by, and how even miniscule amounts of trivia can make a memory click into place so neatly, like fine cufflinks in a shirt, like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
Today at lunch I was sitting in the break room/kitchen area at work, and I was eating the lunch I made the night before: baked chicken, rice, and black beans. I thought to myself, 'black beans sure don't smell vile like black-eyed peas do.'
That brought on a memory of January, 1994, sitting in the Corner Theater of the Stevens Building on NIU's campus in Dekalb. I am up at the booth, running sound and taking cue notes for our upcoming shows in England, and my professor Gene suddenly warns us that he's about to crack open a container of black-eyed peas.
A few of the grad students groan, and I'm not at all aware of why until the smell of those beans wafts back to me. Take bean smell, and just ... multiply it. It's not a bad smell, right? But it's just not something you actively inhale, willingly, you see. It's this wall of pungent bean scent and it won't give up. It will beat you down.
It never occurred to me, until right then at lunch that he was eating them for luck. For the New Year.
It's funny to me how memories can make a lot more sense as time passes by, and how even miniscule amounts of trivia can make a memory click into place so neatly, like fine cufflinks in a shirt, like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
