I Miss My iMac G3

I miss my old iMac G3. There was something vibrant and dynamic about that design. It's hard to tell how much of a role the time in my life that I miss (my college years) plays in my affection for the model. Sadly, I must lament that those days were the best ones of my life. It was an active time where the future seemed expansive and limitless. At 33, I know now that my future is not as I imagined it could be when I was in college. Both a professional life and a personal life are just not going to happen. If it weren't for the continued boon of the cigar shop I spend most of my time, I wouldn't even have anywhere to go socialize. So perhaps it is natural that my thoughts go back to my days at Drury University. There, I built the foundation of anything I've ever had since that I would want to call a life. Now, as I turn to face the terminus of my potential, the beginning of it and what lessons I may draw from it weigh heavily on my mind.

Many universities, especially ones that are large, public, or both have quite a different experience on offer than Drury, so I'll state up front before going further that I speak only to and of the experience of my alma mater. Drury's experience is an extraordinary one, full of idealized friendship, activities, and the kind of fun that makes for great memories. In many ways, this Hogwarts-like warm womb of an environment can make for a harsh surprise when one enters the real world, unused to the relatively barren social life of a twentysomething out in the world. The thing I remember the most is the abject silliness. Making silly movies with a video camera, flying farts to the face, Worms: Armageddon tournaments that lasted hours, playing the world's silliest variant of frisbee, and countless other shenanigans make up the things that cause me to miss that time in my life the most.

My old graphite iMac G3 is an inferior machine by every standard of 2014 and I know that logically. Time has caused me to forget what became of it, but I still think of it. Many of the faces I miss from Drury are like this. Rose-colored glasses tend to make me forget that there are reasons some of the friendships were not maintained. Some of my friends from that time were misogynistic, fundamentalist, insane, unacceptably violent, or just plain assholes. It's probably not a computer I want back or, at least in part, people I want back. Nostalgia isn't ever about the thing you're nostalgic about. What one really gets nostalgic for is something none of us get back, which is time. As I grow older and my parents grow older, I long for a time that had so much potential and comfort going for it that it was truly extraordinary. So I look at pictures of my old computer and my old friends and I wish things had ended up differently and long for a time when I thought they would.

-Frank