So Long, 25

One week from today, I will be 35. I have the ’80s song “Final Countdown” in my head.

Not only will I say farewell to the 25–34 demographic, I will also say farewell to the 10-year-old photo on my driver’s license.

I think it may be the best photo I’ve ever had taken. I was a bright-eyed 25-year-old, not yet beaten down by the textbook publishing industry.

Speaking of the textbook publisher that shall not be named, I volunteered at an awesome nonprofit tonight, called the Prison Book Program. It is the biggest program of its kind in the country. Prisoners write in, asking for books on certain topics. Volunteers then search through a “library” of donated books, and package the books and send them to the prisoners.

So there I was, sitting in a basement in a church in Quincy, and a former coworker from the publisher that shall not be named walked in the door. It was totally bizarre! Comrade Dan Shaw. I hadn’t seen him in awhile, and it was great to see him. He was randomly stopping in to donate books. It got even weirder when later, all of the volunteers at my table were talking, and one of them was from Rochester and went to the same college I did! Now I have “It’s a Small World”*** in my head. And then it got a bit stranger when another volunteer took us on a tour of the church, and we at one point were standing in the crypt where John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and their wives are buried! It was pretty damn cool.

***I purposely link to the Disneyland Paris version because that is the only Disneyland/world/place I have been, believe it or not.