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In my MFA thesis* I wrote a chapter about “Kid A” by Radiohead, and how when it first came out it made me furious. I love rock music, and I wanted another Radiohead rock album, and this wasn’t it. I wanted stuff I could put on in my ridiculous car and play loud with the windows down while I drove around my college town at night by myself. In the essay, I wrote about how my furiousness was really about the fact I was getting older, I wasn’t a teenager anymore, and my ridiculous teenager’s car was ridiculous, and my life was ridiculous, and really I just wanted it to stay 1997 forever where my biggest worry was algebra.

I won’t rehash that essay here more, but I have something to add to it. If I’d not been who I was then, then I couldn’t have enjoyed “Kid A” later, in 2003, when I really needed it. In 2000 I was a junior in college at a big state school, in the journalism college (in that split-second moment where people were starting to think the internet was going to do wonderful/dangerous things to journalism but didn’t quite know exactly what/how). I was too far along to quit, but I didn’t know at all what I could do. I didn’t at all know what I wanted, because I had absolutely no idea what I was good at. I hadn’t tried anything except high school and then journalism, and journalism is just telling people what happened. It isn’t expression or interpretation or explanation, it’s just narrative and the material is dictated. You just copy it down.

In 2003 I was at art college, and was taking three elective classes in studio art in three different programs—graphic design, bookbinding and painting—I’d never attempted before. I had zero experience in studio art. I was working as the news editor of the college newspaper, and DJing and as promotions director for the college radio station. I lived in a beautiful garden apartment in a Victorian house in Savannah. And I was happy.

Just that I would even attempt the coursework, and the hours of effort and practice to get good enough at doing it just to accomplish the work for the classes, plus the extracurricular stuff, plus I probably had a better social life then than almost any other time of my life. I was constantly amazed at myself. I didn’t give up. I worked my ass off. I got straight As. (I did lose part of a finger though in a tragic utility-knife accident, but no big deal.)

I’d never thought I could do art; I never thought I could hone a craft-skill to a good-enough level and then simultaneously have something good enough to express with it. That I could try it, and that I could try it in such a wholehearted way, was an incredible chance to take, and I did. I chose to do the hardest things.

And when I’d come home, tired and sweaty and hunched over, I’d lie on the beautiful wood floor of my apartment and put “Kid A” on and just zone out. In “In Limbo,” Thom Yorke sings “You’re living in a fantasy world.” I was.

So, now, “Kid A” has this nostalgic*** quality for me. I’m nostalgic for a time in my life where I thought for just a short time that I had something to say, and that it was worth saying. And when I listen to it, sometimes I cry a little for that feeling because I miss it so much and I may never have it again.

*I think everybody/anybody who begins anything with “in my thesis” should be punched in the face. Especially in something as self-indulgent as a blog post. Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes**

**I didn’t write that. Walt Whitman did, and he’s a much better writer than I am.

***You probably know this, but the Greek root words for the word “nostalgia” mean “homecoming” and “ache.” Whoever picked that out was a genius.

A few months ago, I had my Porsche 928 in for some services at the Atlanta Porsche service conglomerate, which is part of the super-conglomerate that owns the Volkswagen place where I get my normal, practical-person car worked on. (Also, let me re-note here that while, technically and legally, it is my Porsche, it isn’t really my Porsche at all. I registered it and take it to the service place and if it was parked illegally I’d be the one getting the ticket, but it was and will always be my grandfather’s car. He picked it out, he bought it, he kept it, he just happens to not currently be alive in human form.)

Anyway, while I was there, at about 7:30 a.m. on a weekday, another Porsche owner was dropping off his fancy, newish 911. He was a snappily dressed, mid-40s guy with an English accent, and was pacing around waiting to check his car in after mine. I was answering really sexy questions like “And what’s the RPM when it changes into third gear?” and “Does it squeak always, or just from a cold start?” and “Do you really need a back window wiper?”

“Hey, is that yours?” Mr. Snappy asked me.

“Yes.” I didn’t want to get into the entire family history. I hadn’t had coffee yet.

“Nice.”

“Thank you.”

“Did you buy that new?”

I am thirty years old. Three-zero. In fact, when I was dropping this off, I was still only 29. It’s a 1989 Porsche. I was born in December of 1981. So, this guy was basically asking me if I had $80,000 as an 8-year-old and decided a ridiculous 4-seater Porsche was a smart investment. Actually, if I’d had $80,000 as an 8-year-old, I probably would have bought a swimming pool full of gummy bears.

I tell you this story to tell you this other story. Last Friday, I was getting coffee and a muffin on my way to work at a coffee place. After I’d ordered, the lady ringing me up took a deep breath.

“You can’t get offended,” she said. “But how old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You have a LOT of gray hair!”

I really didn’t know what to say, so I just waited patiently for my muffin and then went to work.

So, in conclusion, I am 10,000 years old.

I never thought my debit card/bank account would be broken into because, basically, I never have any money, and certainly never enough to make any of it worth stealing.

Alas, today, cleaned out.

My bank called me about twenty minutes after I called them, to tell me there was fraudulent activity on my account, after I had already told them there was fraudulent activity on my account. I still have to call their claims department after all the charges are processed and finalized before I can even start the process to get my money back. And they cancelled my debit card, which doesn’t matter much, because there’s no money in my bank account to be debited out anyway. I’ll get a new one in the mail in 5-7 days, but probably won’t have money again until later than that.

So, the appropriate reaction here is to 1) take a credit card then, 2) go to the liquor store and 3) buy everything and then 4) drink it. But here’s the thing: my favorite local booze emporium* gives a cash discount. Seriously. Anything you buy in cash or with a debit card costs $1-2 less than if you buy it on a credit card. Getting drunk as a reaction to my debit card being stolen/bank account being emptied is now MORE EXPENSIVE because I must use a credit card.

Life is unfair, yo.

*I’m talking about the jumbo liquormart in the parking lot of a local supermarket, which is famous because in 2002, a passerby noticed the smell of rotting flesh and called police, and then police found a dead body in a car in the parking lot. So it’s called Murder Kroger. It even has its own Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/MurdrKroger.