Post-Schna-ulations

Moonlight Mile

In an email conversation with brizian (wow, that's a great name!), I got to thinking about the concept of distance, and how it has changed, for me, throughout the years. In elementary school, I had a friend who moved to Waukesha, WI. To me, that might as well have been Manitoba or New Mexico...it was all the same. Outside of the northern Chicago burbs was FAR. There was only NEAR and FAR (dammit, it's all Grover's fault!!!).
Then, I got my license. Suddenly, the 5 mile trip to the mall was nothing. The friends I had in other towns that were more than a few miles away were suddenly visitable. Near started to take on different dimensions. There was walkable-near, drivable-in-ten-minutes-near, drivable-in-an-hour-near, and FAR.
Then I went to college. Three hours away from home gave FAR a new dimension. It was near-far. 4 hour drive to Champaign-Urbana fell into this category as well. The 7-hour trip to Kentucky (from MI) was on the brink of FAR. Beyond that was just FAR. FAR became anything that required several hours on a plane or more than a full day of traveling the car to reach. 6-8 hours in the car is still near-far. Europe is FAR.
True, going back to being car-less and walking everywhere has certainly changed my perspective a bit, and now, most of my friends are spread across the country. The trip from the northern burbs to WI suddenly is a distance that I wish I could have between me and many of those people (because they smell....no seriously, i meant that it's SHORTER than the distance that now exists). AH well...

oh, oh...earlier when i was thinking about this it was far more interesting. I was going to put forth questions such as, why does distance seem to get (relatively shorter)as we get older? is it because we get taller? is it like our junior high seeming smaller because we've grown? (shut up shut up, i know that i haven't grown much since then! it still is pretty big, dammit!). ah well...i have fizzled.

i'm melting, i'm melting....

posted by Schna @ 9:17 AM