'mentos

One of the things I've missed here in Cambridge is the bulletin board in my office in Madison. While others might use their bulletin boards for "project tracking" or reminders, I use mine for mementos.* The last thing I added to it was the "jeremy." sign from my impromptu-pseudo-sub-half-marathon. Last time I was back, I actually typed in a list of the things on my bulletin board, which is now tacked on the bulletin board here at Cambridge but, as you'd expect, is somehow not the same. Anyway, not to imply you care, but here are twenty items from the list, each of which is special to me for its own reasons:

1. Five birthday cards and the uncashed checks that had been enclosed.


2. A nametag saying "Jeremy Freese" but everything else in Chinese


3. A New Yorker cartoon of a man talking to a woman saying saying "I knew it wouldn't last--but I never dreamed it wouldn't last this long."


4. A ticket for a trip to House on the Rock


5. A handwritten menu from a truly amazing birthday dinner.


6. A comic strip called "Marital Mirth" (A: "My wife spends too much on clothes." B: "Could be worse. My wife crushes my soul.")


7. A ticket for a trip to the observation deck of the Space Needle in Seattle


8. A small button with a cartoon dinosaur that says "God is Awesome"


9. My pre-Lasix pair of glasses, tacked to the board with a paper clip


10. A bumper sticker that says "Mentally Confused and Prone to Wandering"


11. A thank-you letter from a television producer that refers to me as "Mozartian-like" in my delivery of a talk


12. A ticket for a trip to Talesin (Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin home/workshop)


13. A bright orange name tag saying "Jeremy Freese" and "SPAM: Social Psych and Microsoc"


14. A flyer advertising Marble Magnets


15. A thank-you note for a homily I delivered at a wedding


16. A letter announcing that I have won an award from the American Sociological Association


17. A Magic 8-Ball keychain


18. A thank-you note from a colleague noting that I "bring out the mother in" her


19. An uncashed check for "statistical consulting"


20. A cartoon in which a girl and her boyfriend are standing outside on a starry night and she says, "When I look at all these stars, it's hard for me to believe that I'm really the center of the universe"

* At least those that are tackable. Other mementoes, such as the tube of "Tormentos" someone made for me when I was working on my dissertation and said I thought they should make a candy for people who "just want to curl up in a ball and be depressed with some mints," I keep on my bookshelves along with my Science Toys. My idea for a "Tormentos" commercial was that it would be just like the Mentos commercial where a car stops in the middle of the crosswalk and the sassy teenage pedestrian blocked by it crawls through the car's backseat to get across. Only instead of showing the kid smiling with the Mentos at the end, it would cut back to the driver, who would sit sadly reflecting on how he had become unadventurous and boring in his middle age, and then just burst out crying there in the intersection, pulling out his Tormentos to comfort him as he slumped in the frontseat sobbing while other cars honked behind him.