Yes I’m a nerd

Elephant & Castle: How Fond I Am of Trains in Other Cities

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When I was in London, I bought myself a day pass for the Underground and rode it all over the city. Underneath the confusing, not remotely grid-like streets, skimming along through the compact tunnels, I felt like I had unlocked a secret warren of passages. I was proud of myself when I stood in a jam-packed car without falling over, my grip resting only lightly on one of the poles, or my arm looped casually around it. Time didn’t seem to matter down there; I would get to my destination whenever I got there, and if I went a stop too far, why, I’d simply turn around and find my stop again. I fancied myself one of Those People, the well-traveled ones who snatch up a map of the local public transportation upon arrival and use the privilege for all it’s worth.

I felt the same way nearly four years ago when my father took me to Boston to look at a college. After a kind stranger showed us how to purchase the correct day passes and positioned us directly in front of where the doors to the car would be, I picked up the workings of the T like that. My dad helped me navigate, of course (he wasn’t about to let a Teenage Girl Wander the City Alone) but I began figuring out the geography of the city and how the T could bring us closest to where we needed to be. I could picture myself there, heading into the city for the day from campus, studying on my way back, my highlighter barely shaking with the motion of the tram.

When I went back to Boston with my mother, I was the one showing her how to use the T. She knew how to read public transportation maps, of course, but I remembered a good deal of the system from my first trip. She didn’t always trust me on which line we should take, but I knew. I was confident.

Confidence was a big deal for me then. It still is. It baffles me that the girl who only rides certain bus routes in this small university town for fear of ending up lost could step onto trams and trains in strange cities and feel perfectly at ease.

I don’t know why I love train travel. Maybe it’s just nice to feel so in control, to look at those multicolored webs and know exactly where I’m going. College is a lovely time of life, but I’m not always certain as to where I’ll end up. When I heard the robotic voice say, “Tower Green,” on the other hand, I knew I’d found my stop.

In Possession of a New Planner

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Every year, I make myself wait until August to buy my planner for the upcoming school year. This is partially because the planners don’t actually include dates before August of the current year, and partially in order to fend off back to school stress dreams (less successfully than I might hope).

I love the cleanness of a new planner, the neatness of its blank pages, the promise that this year I will be more tidy, more organized, more prepared. Conversely, I also love the well-worn beauty of last year’s planner, filled with scrawls and margin notes and satisfactory crossed-out items. Some people keep their journals or diaries from past years, and I do that too. But I also keep all my planners.

Rereading them reminds me of stressful weeks where I nevertheless came out on top, triumphant presentations, get-togethers with friends, etc. They make me nostalgic for the school years past.

Once, while we were moving, I found my mother’s planners from her high school days. I loved poring over her slanting cursive, puzzling out what her personal shorthand meant, wondering which assignments had stressed her out the most. As I cram each year’s planner on my shelf, I can picture my own kids finding them someday and wondering about my life in high school and college.

Yes, there is a certain amount of nerdiness to this pleasure in buying a new planner. But I have always been one of those kids who couldn’t wait for the leaves to turn and the pristine notebooks and fresh crayons to fill my mother’s shopping cart. We used to plan those back to school shopping trips for weeks in advance, highlighting and quantifying every last thing on the school-supplied lists and jotting in our own requests at the bottom. Because my sister, “Bird,” and I often had the same items on our lists, half the pleasure lay in dumping the purchased supplies out on the living room floor and divvying them up. A box of markers for Bird, a box of markers for me. Three newly sharpened pencils in Bird’s pencil box, three for me.

Now that I’m in college, my yearly planner is all that’s left of the clean, crisp school supplies that marked the end of my summers.  Maybe it’s a little strange to be so excited about an organizational tool.  But if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go color code all the events for August in my pretty, shiny, new toy.