Five Things I've Always Loved
Road Trips
I love traveling in general, but specifically, there's something about being in a car on the road that has been a comfort to me for my entire life. When I was a kid, we'd drive to New Smyrna Beach in Florida every summer. I'd take my Discman with me and listen to CDs, usually getting hooked on one in particular for the entire trip (I still remember the summer of Mandy Moore's "I Wanna Be with You"). My sister and I would play travel games, like 20 Questions and the license plate game, where you try to spot as many license plates from different states as you can.
Now that I'm older, Danny and I often drive across states for concerts, and I enjoy the trips almost as much as the concerts themselves. I've continued my tradition of playing 20 Questions with Danny. I like the liminality of stopping at gas stations and rest stops. And we still listen to CDs on the car stereo. I don't mind when it's my turn to drive either. It's usually a pretty straight shot on the interstate or a highway, and there's something kind of relaxing about the steady drone of it.
I do NOT like driving in the city and I wish we had a better public transportation system here, but I love long road trips.
Halloween
I've been a Halloween fanatic for as long as I can remember. In fact, I attribute my deep love of Halloween to the fact that I always had the best Halloweens growing up. I remember going trick-or-treating with my cousins, dressed as a ghost, and pretending we were in Halloweentown. One of my best friends' parents set up a haunted house in their basement every Halloween, and exploring it was a highlight of each year. We'd go to Dollywood and take in all the decorations while eating giant caramel apples. Those memories have stuck with me and helped shape me into the Halloween-loving person I am today.
Swimming
My mom and aunt would often take my cousins and me to a public pool in the summers, and I developed a love of swimming there. We would pretend we were competing in the Olympics, and I always represented Peru, because at the time I was really into the Paddington Bear books and that's where he was from. That's kid logic for you.
As an adult, I still love swimming, and I wish it was something that was more accessible to me. I've gone wild swimming in the lake and river a couple of times this summer, and I'm hoping to do that more before August ends. I've thought about getting a membership at the YMCA so I can use their pool to swim laps, but it's a bit of an investment and not something I'm sure I want to pay for yet. Being in the water is one of my favorite things, though, and I would do it every day if I could.
Watches
In 1993, I got one of the promotional Nightmare Before Christmas watches at Burger King, and that thing was my most prized possession for years. I was obsessed with Nightmare Before Christmas, and I became obsessed with watches after that. From then on, I was never without a watch.
That has extended into adulthood. I'm wearing a white Casio G-SHOCK G-LIDE right now. My dad always had a Casio watch, and I thought they were the coolest-looking things. I don't subscribe to the notion that we don't need watches anymore because we have phones instead. I don't want to have to pull my phone out of my pocket to get the time when I can just easily look at my wrist. Plus, Casios have other features, and they're just cool and retro!
Tolkien
Around five years old, I watched Rankin/Bass's 1977 The Hobbit animated film. It was one of my dad's favorite films, and I fell in love with it too. The animation was quirky and stylized in a way I'd never seen before, and I loved the "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" song. Fast-forward a few years later -- I was rummaging in my school library when I stumbled upon a book called The Hobbit. Remembering the cartoon I loved so much, I checked it out immediately. Ten years later, I was still reading it almost yearly.
Of course, I went on to read Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. When I was in middle school, the first film came out, and I was obsessed. My sister and I bought the special edition box set of the trilogy, and we watched both the movies themselves and the special features over and over again.
Tolkien's works are timeless. I'll always love the rich fantasy setting and the messages that power corrupts and that fellowship/community is important. My favorite quote of all time comes from The Hobbit, uttered by Thorin Oakenshield: "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."