« FUNNY PENIS STORIES III | Main | THE MOJO IS... ON »
October 21, 2004
IT WAS TEN YEARS AGO TODAY... SGT. MUDGEON TAUGHT THE BAND TO PLAY...
There are days in your life that you say changed your life forever... and then, there are the days that actually do.
Here's an example. I will hyperbolically say that October 20, 2004 changed my life, because the Sox finally beat the Yankees. That won't really be true. The events of that date made me ridiculously happy, but if I'm honest with myself I should not say my life changed because of it.
On the other hand, October 21, 1994 really was a "before and after" date in my life. In fact, it was the before and after day in my life. Because on that day -- ten years ago today -- I left Minnesota (where I'd lived since age 4) forever and moved to the east coast. More than simply a change of time zones, that move was the seminal, defining move of my life. As many times as I have moved since then, and as many cities/states as I have lived in the ensuing years, none involved as dramatic or as defined a change as that move.
I won't bore you with the details of the circumstances surrounding my decision. Suffice it to say that it involved a woman I expected to marry, another guy, a real big surprise... and that it got to me so much that I didn't just need time to recover, I needed distance. If you called it running away from a bad situation, I couldn't argue with you -- though I looked at it as proactively taking control at a point where most of what I thought would be my life was spinning out of my control.
I suppose the truth is that the events of that late August and September gave birth to The Curmudgeon... because that's when I went from being optimistic, trusting and annoyingly "can-do" to becoming the towering giant of cynicism and skepticism you see before you today. They say everyone has a moment where the insulated innocence of youth (no matter how old you are when it happens) is finally and apocolyptically confronted by the harsher realities of life. That summer was my such moment. So certainly from an attitude standpoint, that was the before and after point.
So anyway, I needed to leave. A friend of mine from politics had just been named to a post in Washington DC, and there was a chance I could go to work for him. So he arranged for an interview for me with the Chief of Staff for Monday the 24th. That Friday, I tossed everything I could fit into two huge suitcases, put $150 in my wallet, and hopped on a Greyhound for Washington. They might have thought I was just coming out for an interview. I knew I was never going back home. I think my dad thought I would be back by Christmas. I think my mom knew I wouldn't. But they both drove me to the Greyhound station -- just down the street from Minneapolis' only famous club, First Avenue (of Purple Rain fame), and saw me off.
I know how B-movie it sounds for me to say that I got on a bus out of the prairies and headed for the coast with only the clothes I could carry, and all the money I could save in the ten days between the day I learned of the interview and the day it would take place. (And I know $150 sounds like very little, but committee clerks at the Minnesota Senate made $14,400 per legislative year in 1994. $150 in a week and a half was no small feat, given other bills I had to pay. And without exaggerating or overdramatizing my background, I'll just say that it was up to me to come up with whatever money I needed; no one else was able to help out. If I'd have taken more time to plan it out or think about what I was doing, I'd have had more... but it really was a decision made in the span of ten days.)
But that's what I did. No definite job lined up, very little money in pocket, nothing but two suitcases in hand. Most everyone's been in that post-split stupor, where you just get so fixated on making a change that you can't be worried about the details of how it will happen. My older cousin (Joe the Bartender's older brother) was stationed in Silver Spring, Maryland... so I arranged to crash in his spare bedroom until I knew what I was doing. When I think back on it now, it seems so impetuous and ill-thought out. But I guess one of the good things about being 26 and having not yet really ever failed at anything was that the idea that things wouldn't work out never occurred to me. Of course I'd get that job. I was me, after all - didn't the world know that? Why would DC be any harder than Minnesota had been?
So I got there, did the interview, and was told that though I had the job, I wouldn't start until March. This complicated my plans a little. But by the end of that week, I'd gotten a job working at a hipster clothing store in the Pentagon City mall (I was still thin way back then, and could pull off working in a store for the young, svelte and trendy) to keep some money coming in. I talked to the former campaign cronies I knew who worked on the Hill, and moved in with one of them on December in her spare bedroom on Capitol Hill (I wanted to be in the middle of things and not up in Maryland, at the time). I interned at then-Congressman David Minge's office during the day for three months to keep learning and to meet people. And never once did I consider going home to Minnesota; my Rubicon had been crossed, and I was never looking back.
I started the job the following March; I ended up spending three years in the DC area before leaving for grad school. Since my original move, I've pretty much lived up and down the entire east coast; five different states, about a dozen different houses or apartments, in every kind of life circumstance. I've moved so often that U-Haul knows me by face. I still don't know where I'm going to end up eventually when I grow up. But none of those moves and none of my life circumstances have ever felt as before and after as that first one. (Funny thing... my luck with women never really changed, though. The more some things change, the more they stay the same - no matter which state you live in.)
As I look back on the last ten years... do I regret moving? There are a couple things I know would have been very different about my life. From all the political stuff I'd done, I had positioned myself very strongly within the local Democratic party in the town-becoming-exurb I lived in; it's not at all an exaggerated supposition to say that I probably would have run for state office by now with the party endorsement - and since it was a Democratic area, I would likely have won. I could have been State Senator Curmudgeon by now; depending on how the cards shook out, I might even be making my first run for US Congress in 2004. And there are a few things I think might well have been different had I stayed... people and relationships that might have played out differently had I not been so intent on getting away that particular fall.
But had I not moved, I would have missed out on everything that's happened to me in the last ten years, both good and bad. (And there's been plenty of both.) I'm not going to subject anyone to the roll call of what I think I've accomplished or have yet to accomplish in my life out here, what I am happy about and what I feel regretful of. I'll simply say that all things happen for a reason; whether you choose to ascribe that to God, fate, chance, or whatever... whoever or whatever is responsible for the plan, I do believe that there is a reason for everything. Whether I will ever get let in on the plan or not, I don't know... but there is one.
I do know that I've met the best friends I'll ever have in DC, in Boston, in New York, in Florida. My life's better for that. And I've had a bunch of experiences that obviously I would never have had if I had stayed in Minnesota. It's been a roller coaster at times... but dammit, it's my roller coaster.
So considering all that, my answer is no... I don't regret it. I wouldn't do it any differently. I'm where I am and who I am, for better or worse, because of a decision made on October 11, 1994 and carried out on October 21.
Ten years ago today.
