The Thing

Nothing a little orthodontic work and a visit to Kathi couldn't fix

I don't go in for horror movies, although never having seen one, I can't really blow them off.  I just figure there's plenty of stuff in real life to scare the socks off any sane person, and I don't see any point in paying Rupert to help me with that.  As far as I'm concerned he has more than he needs already. Anyway, so I never saw The Thing, either the first time around or the more recent version.  Although, you know, come to think of it, I'm not so sure Rupert isn't the star of that movie anyway.  Oliver Stone insists they've never been seen together, and he knows all about these things.  Oh heck, you decide.

But believe it or not, this post isn't about Rupert, Fox, the Thing or even Oliver Stone.  It's about Things.

 I get them sometimes, and have most of my life.  I have no idea where they come from, but they stick around for years, and sometimes for decades.  In some cases they're just hugely abiding interests and in some cases they really become obsessions.  Knitting, I'm quite pleased to say, is a Thing.

Where do they all belong?

A Thing is an interest, but it goes beyond that.  It involves behavior and it often involves talking about it so much it bores the pants off anyone unlucky to be around me.

My first Thing, the best I can recall, was the Beatles.  That was in high school and then college and then after.  I ended up teaching a course on that subject at my college's "free college."  So I guess the first qualification for a thing is what Mr. Darcy called "the improvement of the mind by extensive reading."  Even as early as the late 1960s there were some pretty decent biographies, including one that, probably because it cut out the dodgy stuff and lavished the individual band members with pretty much unqualified praise, was "authorized."   Yeah, I'll bet.

I'll tell you: I don't know.

A few years after the Beatles, and overlapping for several decades, was Judaism, and especially Jewish history.  It became essentially a college major and was the subject of a truncated run at a graduate degree.  I read books about Judaism, I read books about Jews, I read books by Jews.  I learned Hebrew after a  fashion and immersed myself in Jewish thought.  I ended up teaching some on that too.  

I won't go into all my Things, but they've stayed with me -- WWII (which evolved out of Judaism, on a direct line through the death camps), beekeeping, modern physics and cosmology.  Most recently, by which I mean the last three or four years, it's knitting and Japanese, as you can tell by looking at my blog, if you do.  Knitting sweaters especially.  Wool.  Sheep.  Warm, snug sweaters that are proof against old man Murdoch.  Uh, winter.

No, it's not mine

Japanese, the language, the culture, the history.  I am always making up sentences in Japanese, as though to convince myself that I won't forget how to say "my name is" and "please" the minute I get off the plane in Osaka.   

My kids apparently take bets on how long a Thing will last.  They don't tell me what they're betting on, long or short.  I imagine some of the Things they think won't last actually do.  And anyway, a short run for me is a couple of years.

Things.  Who knows why they happen or what the next one will be.

Do other people have Things?  Do you?