Since When?

I bumped into a book searching for something completely different. The book is a collection of six word memoirs. It is published by Smith magazine, and maybe I saw a Nora Ephron quote from the book and opened a new window. I enjoy Nora Ephron's writing, and now I enjoy Smith magazine, too. Easily distracted, I immediately began composing my own six-word autobiography. It started with "I'll get right on that. Later." I arrived there after a short mental trip through "I told you I was sick" [taken]; "Not this time you don't, buster!" [paranoid]; and "When does my turn get here?" [ahem...].

I talked with my friend Joel soon after. We were opening new conversation windows, companionably moseying through the week's events, and inevitably, we landed on change. Not my favorite word, subject or circumstance. Maybe we wandered there through a new excerpt from his novel, my cut hours at The Corporate Job, my painfully long-term memory of the discontinued favorite mascara. However we got there, change led to my resistance to same, to the Smith book bump, and six-word autobiographies. I said maybe mine should be "How long's THAT been going on?"

It's my new thing about change.

My sister laughs at me. She does this affectionately certainly, but nonetheless she finds my quirks, twists, and passionate attachment to attempting to maintain a NO CHANGE life amusing. She thinks this because she is a smart, awake woman who knows that change is an opportunity for growth.

She thinks resisting change is silly.

For a long time, I thought change was silly.

One of my outed obsessions my sister spotted is tracking down the origin of a cold. How did I get this? This compulsion to solve the crime does nothing to cure the cold. But I feel better if I can identify the culprit who passed the virus along. It's my own little epidemiological kink. Silly absolutely.

Apparently another new outed obsession is tracking down how long something I didn't know about was out there being/doing/altered from whatever else I thought I knew.

I found out yesterday that cranberries are seasonal. Did you know this? I guess I did in the knowledge fog that loiters around the back of your brain, but there are other seasonal things that you can actually lay your hands on out of season. Like tomatoes. Or Christmas ornaments. Or a swimsuit.

Not cranberries. The young woman who explained this to me in the store started to take tiny steps backwards when I responded to her answer about cranberries and my inability to get some except from September to December by asking the obsessively odd, personally-affronted question "Since when?"

Honestly, does it matter how long cranberries have not been available except between September and December?

No.

My resistance to change silliness has not lessened, as I have congratulated myself on recently: it has just become a different silliness.

But until I take advantage of the cranberry-induced growth opportunity, it has been deeply satisfactory to me to find out that cranberries are grown in bogs on the eastern seaboard, in Michigan and Minnesota, and in British Columbia. Cold areas, with a short growing season and a harvest in late August, or early September. 95% of cranberries are used for juice.

Those of you who secretly asked the question "what happens to the cranberries that are harvested, but are then diabolically not available to me from the months of January-August?" now can rest assured that the absent cranberries are being put to good use.

And it's been going on for a long, long time.

At the end of the conversation with my friend Joel, having shortened my six-word memoir to two words "Since When?" I decided that I'm going to abandon the obsession to find out how long stuff I didn't know has been out there without my knowledge.

When my sister lets me know what this obsession turns into, I'll let you know.