50 for 50: 1993

YEAR: 1993

AGE: Turned 23 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: Milwaukee's East Side, Royall Place; Milwaukee's East Side, Prospect Avenue

WISCONSIN FOOTBALL RECORD: 10-1-1

SONGS I LIKED: "Plush" by Stone Temple Pilots; "Dyslexic Heart" by Paul Westerberg; "Mrs. Robinson" by the Lemonheads

MOVIES I SAW: "Jurassic Park"; "The Firm"; "Indian Summer"

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "Seinfeld"; "Home Improvement"

CONCERTS I EXPERIENCED: Spin Doctors/Soul Asylum/Screaming Trees; Don Henley; Paul McCartney

MUSIC VIDEOS I ENJOYED: "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz; "River of Dreams" by Billy Joel

VIDEO GAMES I PLAYED: Super Mario World; Final Fantasy Legend III

Two stories for 1993, one funny/painful, the other sort of deep.

Lori and I started dating that spring, and on probably our fourth or fifth date, we went riding on the bicycle trails near her house on Milwaukee's far west side. The day was gorgeous -- perfect for a bike ride, and a chance to do something active together for the first time. 

The ride was going well until we reached a long, flat, straight stretch of the paved trail. I'm explaining in detail the terrain to make clear that no external factors caused me to wipe out. I was in the lead, so Lori saw the whole thing, but there is no logical reason why I crashed. I simply lost the gravitational relationship between my feet and the pedals, tried jumping off the back of the bike in a panic, and scraped my knee pretty badly on the pavement.

Lori, bless her heart, did everything she could not to laugh at what might have been the most ridiculous bike accident she had ever seen. I've wiped out on my bike several times, but something always caused it -- something getting stuck in a spoke, hitting a hole, running into another cyclist, getting my pant leg stuck in the derailleur, and so on. This time, I just fell off my bike in front of a girl I really liked.

We rode back to Lori's house, where she didn't have any Bactine, Neosporin, hydrogen peroxide, or something to clean out the wound other than ... rubbing alcohol. I briefly screamed out loud when she applied it to my knee, which must have looked really manly. She still liked me anyway. 

The second story is from the fall, also near Lori's house. At the newspaper, I was working for a separate tabloid, Badger Plus, devoted to University of Wisconsin sports. The production schedule meant working several hours on Sunday, a long, long day on Monday, and then to late afternoon on Tuesday. That fall, after I got off work, I might not even go home and instead drive out to Lori's house, maybe pick up McDonald's, and wait for her finish her day. We might get one whole mutual day off together on Wednesday and Thursday. On those fall nights, we would go out on long walks to get some exercise (now that I had the car, I didn't need to trek to work on foot anymore), talk, and enjoy the crisp evening air.

Our walks often would lead into Wauwatosa, the suburb next to Lori's neighborhood, and the older houses that comprised the residential neighborhoods there. As we would walk, I'd look at the homes and into the windows -- not in a Peeping Tom kind of way, but just a glance in from the sidewalk -- and wonder about the people and the families living there. What was their day like? Are their kids doing homework? How are they relaxing this evening? How different or the same was tonight compared with every other night?

This wasn't just an exercise in imagination -- I was starting to understand that, someday, I would be the person living in a house, relaxing after a long day, making sure my kids were doing their homework, and knowing another day awaited. Besides realizing that all these people had their own lives and mine wasn't the only center of a respective universe, a domesticated future probably awaited. That's heady stuff for someone just turning 23, and I needed a residential neighborhood -- after living in more dense areas for the previous five years -- to see that. I wasn't necessarily dreading that, but was just surprised I hadn't comprehended that part of adulthood before.

When did I first get that domestic experience? Oddly, not quite when we bought the house and had kids. After I dropped down to part-time in 2007, I remember being home on a Saturday night in November, we had picked up some dinner, and we settled in to watch the Utah-BYU football game. I didn't have many Saturday nights off during our time in Utah up until then, but something felt like ... home that night -- kids, relaxation, a goal for the evening, a cold fall night.

Now, I still walk through our residential neighborhoods at night, and I sometimes still wonder what the people in their homes are up to. We all have our own little universes. Today, however, theirs don't seem quite as different as mine. And, the person who I was walking with 27 years ago still likes to go on walks with me -- and tries not to laugh when I inexplicably and comically wipe out.

 

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