Road Worthy Rejuvenile

Some days I feel like that guy in that Johnny Cash song...”I’ve been everywhere man, Bangor, Auburn, Lewiston, Portland, I’ve been everywhere...”

Today, as a matter of fact, I am back in Bangor after spending the weekend in the Portland area and tomorrow I head south again past Portland to Sanford. I’m far from the miles I drove across the great plains but I feel like a road warrior nonetheless.

But I’m restless. So after finishing for the day I got back in the car and drove to Orono, home of The University of Maine. Like a colleague of mine I get a little nostalgic visiting campuses and college towns and I too, feel a connection to the particular kind of energy that circulates so freely in these environments. I get a little nostalgic when I find myself in these communities, but more and more I wonder if I am nostalgic not for my university experience but for someone else’s.

School is always in the back of my head like a safety net. I know that it’s there and I can convince myself in my state of suspended adolescence that it will always remain an option but looking around the Bear Brew Pub tonight I was starkly reminded that I still have nothing in common with the jocks and sorority princesses that exist in my nostalgia. I am not Bluto and I didn’t go to Faber College. It is the idea of school that fires my imagination, the keg parties, cheerleaders and ideological freedoms.

But we all know these things represent a fantasy. The reality is much different. I was bound by a different set of experiences and responsibilities than I am today, but bound just the same. All things considered I enjoyed my time at school but I don’t miss it. I remember some great times but there were many hard times as well. In many respects I am enjoying a freedom that I could never afford as a student. I just hope what they say about 40 being the new 30 is true. Bring on "Sanford, Dover, Concord and Vermont ‘cause I’m a travelin’ man."