Solidarity in typos.

Right when I moved into my new apartment, I got a two-volume academic book set shipped in from abroad, and I noticed that although the invoice had everything spelled correctly, there was an extra "-t" at the end of my street name, which I couldn't quite figure out why it got there, and I chalked it up to a non-native speaker of English assembling the shipping label.

Then, later that month, I was changing my billing address on an online music-and-books site when I was going to order a CD, and I noticed that I had made the same exact typo in writing my own address, and I had to go back and correct it before I placed my order.

Oddly enough, no "t" appears in my street name, so there must be something in the way that you type that goes and makes you do that, although I can't quite figure out exactly what it is.

New college town people (8 of 8): Bartender.

At the one brewery where I had gone and sat out on the patio on a nice early afternoon after I had first moved, and where I had learned that Tuesdays and Sundays tend to be the super slow days with sometimes only like eleven sales the entire day, I went in on a Tuesday evening since it's a huge warehouse space with tons of room and high ceilings and the few people I had seen there inside were very conscientious with masks, with the bartender wearing them and the customers putting them on when they were moving around the room and not sitting at their seats.

So, it seemed safe enough to go try and sit inside, at least now while it's low Covid and I'm not working with the elderly yet.

So, I went there and was reading some books at the end of the bar far away from all of the other people, and I started talking with the (young) (plaid flannel-shirted) (broad-faced) (knit-capped) (white) girl, and it turns out that she likes languages, too, and she was going to a small regional college for ASL before everything went to heck and she moved home because of Covid.

And, she's not in college right now, and she's not sure if and when she's going back, since she doesn't know what she wants to do, and I suggested maybe checking into speech therapy, and she said she actually had that in elementary school because she couldn't pronounce an "s" after a "th" and her kindergarten teacher noticed that and so she had three years of therapy, which kind of sucked, but the speech therapist also would give her M&Ms, and so all the other kids were jealous when she got up to leave and go there, since they saw the M&Ms, not how she had to read the same sentences and pages over and over for an hour each time, which could get kind of boring.

"That's kind of nice that they didn't stigmatize you," I was like.

"Yeah," she was like, "But I always felt bad because they made the only black kid go, because he talked, what do they call it now, AAVE."

And, she said that he was in the crime listing in the local paper recently and her mom showed it to her, and she felt bad, and she hates it when that happens.

I also talked with her more and she's hesitant about getting the booster shot because she's afraid of needles and she has to go take this other drug first to overcome her phobia of needles before she goes and gets the actual shot, but I explained to her some more about the omicron variant, and she agreed and said that she'd have to look into the booster right away.

And, she said that she suspects that she had Covid in February 2020, before everyone knew about the virus and that it was already circulating in the U.S.

"And don't judge me," she was like, "But I used to do a lot more drugs than I do now, and they have this saying that you can trip the sick away, and I think that's what happened to me," and she said that she felt totally like crap with stuff that she now recognizes as being like Covid systems, but she dropped some acid with her friends and all those symptoms just totally disappeared right afterwards, and that's the only time in her life that that's happened, but it did.

She also said that they keep the patio out front open all winter and I can always use that whenever I want, and that there's this trivia team who bundles up and goes and sits out there all the time, but it's not so much Covid, though they say it is, but it's so they can look at their phones out there and cheat.

New college town people (7 of 8): Bar customer.

In the college town that I now live in, there's several bars that are very spacious and empty, and so I've checked them out on early afternoons when they're first open and no-one is there, since Covid cases are low and I'm not working yet and so I can be slightly less neurotic than I have for the past 2 years.

And, at the one music one where a jam session was going on and there was a handful of customers spaced out, more people were coming in for the second act just as I was leaving, and this (sixty-something) (tight curly-haired) (white) woman moved with her friend over by me for the view right as I went to leave, and she asked what I was studying, and I told her, and then she asked what I worked in, and I told her, and it turns out that she's in healthcare too, and she teaches some classes at the local community college, and she told me that she doesn't believe in religion but she takes her inspiration from nature, and I told her about that recent scientifically-confirmed case of parthenogenesis in California condors, and she was like, "What's that?", and so I told her, and then she told me about this one case where a teenager came in with her mom just sobbing and was like, "But Mom, I didn't, I didn't!", and what do you know, her hymen was intact, and she also has taught sex ed in high schools, and young men's sperm is so strong, that one can actually climb its way all the way up your thighs and into your womb and get you pregnant, even if they don't put it in there, and so you know what that means, and all the kids were like, "Yes, Mrs. P!" (or a name like "Mrs. P"), "Don't have any sex unless you want to get pregnant!", and that's right, that can happen, and that's what she taught them.

Some bad weather was also coming in, and she told me about a snowplow that her ex-boyfriend from years ago used to have, and she pulled up some pictures of snow on her phone to show to me.

New college town people (6 of 8): Mall event space.

When I was getting all the necessary stuff to the framers to get that one print framed, I passed through the lobby of this small mall that's just off downtown, and it turns out that on that very day they were having some indoor arts-and-craft market, which mostly turned out to be printed clothing items and some homemade lotions stuff, and one CBD oil stalls where there was this one (late middle-aged) (very wrinkly) (white woman) with wild eyes, who was selling this huge array of little bottles of differently-flavored hard candies that she'd made, as well as some other CBD stuff that I can't remember.

And, she was talking to someone as I walked by, and all slowly and seriously and matter-of-factly I could overhear her saying, "...and then I smelled something, and I go check, and my cat's on fire, I don't leave stuff burning around, but I had a candle going on the floor and she went by and her tail caught on fire, and I can't have that, you just can't have that, the last thing I need is a cat on fire running around my house..."

New college town people (5 of 8): Gallery.

In the college town that I now live in, I was waiting for a bus to go drop off some couch cushions at an upholsterer way out on the edge of town, but the bus wasn't leaving quite yet for a half hour or so, so I popped into a second-floor art gallery like half a block up from the bus stop since a sidewalk signboard advertising it had caughten my eye, and so I ended up talking a lot with the (older) (grayer) (white) lady there, who I'm not sure was wearing a chunky-knit scarf, but definitely had that vibe, since she held down a second-floor art gallery in a college town.

And, right after we started talking, she said she'd be happy to sew my couch cushions for me and do those small cloth repairs, and I could go to an art shop and get foam and cut it myself and I could save a lot of money.

And, she also had some candy set out by the door, including a little ceramic mug full of Smarties, and when I was like, "If you don't mind, I'm going to get another one," and I told her that they hit the spot since I had actually woken up that morning with a craving for Bottle Caps, she was like, "Take them all," and she grabbed the mug and motioned it to me like I should dump it into my handbag.

"I need to sell the mug anyway," she was like.

And, we talked more, and it turns out that she was originally from the city that I had just left, and after mentioning the neighborhood that she grew up in and where her family moved to, I was like, "I'm sorry if this question sounds weird, but is your family Lithuanian Jewish?", since it sounded like (Lithuanian Jewish) biographies that I knew from working at the resthome.

And, her family was!

She also said that all three of her kids are in the city that I just left, and so I don't have to explain to her why I left. She says her daughter does television event production stuff, and so a lot of times she's out at different park buildings in worse neighborhoods, and for months now she calls her every time she's out someplace, when she's there and when she's back, since she wants to check in since she's afraid of getting carjacked. And, she never used to do that.

New college town people (4 of 8): Giftshop.

In the college town that I now live in, I popped into the coffee shop on the major street near me one weekend afternoon, and a door was open inside into the store next store, where they had a special Christmas shop set up for the weeks before Christmas, that was advertised as "now indoors" and was something like the second or third annual one.

And, the (younger) (big-boned) (round) (white) woman with a slight accent showed me around with some different items, and all of a sudden it clicked that she was probably (German) and was trying to reproduce the experience of a booth from an outdoor Christmas market like she had at home, and so I asked her what country she was from, and what do you know, she was indeed (German).

She got really into describing all of the items, too, like this one jam assembled by a local forager who likes to collect things from the local fields and forests and connect people to nature wasn't just only that, but the berry jam was also like standing in a misty forest on a cool morning, and going through and collecting berries and trying each one, in turn.

(I got the quince jam; it was soupy.)

I think people here don't have to work too much since it's so relatively cheap to live here, and so people are just kind of bored all the time and find ways to keep themselves occupied, which isn't necessarily opposed to the area attracting a certain number of eccentric creatives, too, not an overwhelming number, but a striking number, like enough where you notice.

Time moves so slowly here, it's wonderful.

New college town people (3 of 8): Museum.

On the way to the academic library in the college town that I now live in, to check out some books after getting my access card from there, I stopped through the campus museum to check out its hours and Covid protocols and also its ancient exhibits, since admission was free and it was on my way and the library that I was going to was open late that day.

And, the (college age) (somewhat skinny) (pleasant) (darker black) (twenty-something) (female) student at the front desk there said that at this time of year it's usually dead on weekdays, and she'd been there all afternoon and maybe three people had come in.

So, I went to check out the exhibits, which were a bit underwhelming apart from this one thing, and on the way out I hit the restroom and picked my stuff up from the locker room there and then said goodbye to her on my way out, as I got a squirt of hand sanitizer from the big bottle of hand sanitizer sitting on the desk in front of her.

"So," I was like, "Have you ever noticed the...?", and then I went on to describe this one palace tile that they had upstairs, that was tied to this one hugely pivotal civilizational moment from a major well-known ancient civilization all the way on the other side of the world, but that people don't necessarily appreciate or even really know about it.

"Yeah," she was like, "I have noticed that."

So, I briefly described the religious and cultural development a bit more, and you could tell that she was really into it, and then I was like, "And isn't it crazy that this sh*t is just sitting here in a museum in [area of the state that we're in], I know that that's how they used to do it, just go around and rip sh*t out of places and cart it off and give it to people, that was colonialism, but still, that's crazy, that this sh*t is just sitting up there all day and it's just like, there."

"Yeah," she was like, and she had like a slightly amused look on her face and chuckled a bit, like she was into it and agreed with me but I also kind of got her by articulating something that she automatically agreed with but had never really thought about before that much.