The first improv class was fun. Like being in kindergarten again, or as one participant put it: "Gymboree for adults." I got to dance like a spazz -- intentionally, no great difficulty there as I usually do it unintentionally -- and do a bunch of mirroring exercises.

There's a nice mix of people and personality types in my group (18 or thereabouts). It was kind of cool, and a little intimidating, to pass by the mural of Second City Alums on the way there. I also got my Second City Student ID, which is a business card printed on colored cardstock. Fan-cy. Gets me into free stuff and discounted shows. One other guy took the El back to the Loop with me, a recent Duke University grad (history major no less) who now works for a nonprofit.

I'm sorry that I'll have to miss next week's class because we're traveling. They let you do makeups. In fact, they force you to do makeups. If you miss more than two classes (even with makeups) you don't get credit for completing the level. Troupe cohesion and all that.

So, if you're curious about the E.E. Knight collection at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, they've got my boxes all categorized by content. In it you'll find fascinating tidbits like this:

Letter to Knight's mother regarding VE2 manuscript The Choice of the Cat, 2002

Take that, Tom Wolfe. That's the sort of fascinating life of letters I lead. Talking to my mom about my books.

Although my favorite has to be the one that comes dead last

Item possibly used as bookmark during edits while on plane

The poor graduate assistant SOBs had to catalog everything I gave them, and if I remember right that's a boarding pass or folded up book jacket or something in a manuscript that I forgot to extract. They actually asked me about it.

Of course the list is incomplete. I just emptied a couple of Rubbermaid containers to make room. There's still mountains of stuff here in the office they're going to get. Eventually.

Again, poor SOB graduate assistants.

On the other hand, I'm chuffed. When I graduated from NIU O! these many years ago, if you'd told me the library would one day house correspondence from my mom as part of a collection of my papers, I would have soiled my gown laughing. I mean, I'd done well enough there, came out of it with both departmental and university honors, but I don't think anyone, even my parents, were foreseeing great things for me. Though the history department did give us a nice breakfast with a keynote address from Professor Marvin Rosen, one of my favorites (a humorous old Marxist who loved a good argument, especially when opposed by a snotty little William F. Buckley reader like me. He gave me an A), who talked about the kind of people who majored in history. After Mom said that for the first time since I announced my major, she felt good about my choice.

Life. You just never know, do you?