My Blue Heaven

The mail arrives, and rather than be full of junk ads for political campaigns, insurance companies, and furniture far too rich for my blood, it comes with three or four personalized advertisements for this college or that one. They are not addressed to me or Kelly, but rather to Zach, who, a year from now, will be wrapping up his senior year in high school. We’ll know where he is going to college by then, a thought that seemed utterly impossible 17 years ago when he arrived on the scene. I’ve been thinking a lot about my time in college, about the things I did, and didn’t do; thinking about the lifelong friends I made there; thinking about the classes I took and the professors I studied under. I’ve been thinking about the music I listened to while in school, whether it was while studying, or working in the dorm dish room, or walking to-and-from classes listening to cassettes on my Sony Walkman1. I’ve been thinking about the movies I saw, and the papers I wrote, and the late night,…