T-shirt #40: Indiana University in Hebrew

T-shirt #40: Indiana University in Hebrew - GO HOOSIERS

Today feels a little milestone-ish. Welcome to 365 T-shirts: Blog #40. After the last few days, I feel a bit like I have been dragged for a few miles by crazed apocalyptic warriors riding motorcycles across the hard-packed wastelands of the desert climates of Australia. (Does Australia have deserts or was that just a movie thing?)

My shirt for today features the word "Indiana" in Hebrew, meant for Indiana University. I received the shirt in the mail last week as a gift from my best friend, Tom Meyers, who attended IU back in the 1990s for law school. Tom has some Jewish heritage, which makes the gift resonate a bit more vividly. During our regular correspondence, I sent Tom links to my blog, and he was inspired to send me this shirt as a gift. Though it's a LARGE, and typically I wear an EXTRA LARGE, just to be comfortable not because I am all that extra or large, it does fit well. And though this is not the usual practice, I am wearing it right now as I type this blog entry.

As for the significance of IU, I visited Bloomington many times during those years to spend quality time with Tom, who goes by the title of the Lord of Chaos or the LOC (and this title thing is a story for another time). We played Ultimate in pick up games at Dunn Meadow on IU's campus. There's some creek there. I can see it on Google Maps, but it's not named. We also played a lot of D&D in his various apartments in Bloomington.

One of our sessions ranks as the second greatest gaming session of my life, second only to the first time, which is unbeatable. We played for sixteen straight hours with few breaks and without leaving the apartment. When we did emerge, at like two in the morning, the world around us seemed strange and lackluster. After all, we had been living in our imaginations for the entire day, the length of TWO typical work days; we had been engaged in highly complex discourse as we constructed a story within a world featuring multiple characters, high drama, great risk, and great reward. We also consulted rules and debated the finer points. Our intellects were fully operational and at  maximum capacity, so that when we emerged, and went to Kroger of all places, the world seemed dull and the people dim-witted by comparison. As if struck by lightning and doused with chemicals, I had an epiphany about the cause of my own misanthropy. This was it!! I had trouble understanding how people could not be so immersed in the imagination and the power of creation, the intellect, and art. I think of this time often as I struggle to be more loving and accepting of others and not so misanthropic. As for the game, Tom rolled dice better than he ever has in his life with back-to-back, critical, natural 20 rolls to beat unbeatable opponents. It was epic, and we still talk about it to this day. It's experiences like this one that define a life.

The gift is special as is my friendship, and those times are cherished.

Indiana University is a beautiful place. Sometimes I wonder how my life might have been different had I gone to school there.

- chris tower 1304.30 - 8:54