Cost

I should probably save a lot of what I'm thinking for a lecture somewhere a little further down the road, but since I find myself currently preoccupied with the cost of just about everything, I suppose I should jot down a few reminders for me and anyone else who happens to get in front of the rambling dissertation I'm about to let fly.
I thought when I was older that things would get easier. I would be more capable and resolute. I wouldn't have as many fears as I did back when I was not this old. I figured I would eventually understand everything and that same group of everything would come to me in simple, bite-size chunks that I would chew up and spit out. That hasn't turned out to be the case. Back when I had a small circle of friends, I could sometimes keep up with their demands, and I was aided and abetted by an external hard drive of memories called parents who would nudge me back on track when I needed it. Now I have a vast ocean of acquaintances and colleagues and partners in crime. I have trouble remembering them all, in part because there are more than there used to be and also because my brain is not as soft and absorbent as it used to be. As much as I pride myself on my ability to recall arcane bits of pop culture, as well as the details of childhood and the adventure that it provided, I know there are faces and places and events that have now receded into the mist. There is precious little room on this drive.
But I remember college. I remember how free it felt. How inventive and clever I imagined myself to be each time I walked into yet another creative writing workshop. From that vantage point, I could imagine looking back on those formative years from my study, on the way to the next publisher's gala where I would be celebrated for my wit and seemingly endless productivity. Stories and images would flow from me via the Bic pen I used almost exclusively onto yellow legal pads that someone else would transcribe, turning all these great ideas into books and screenplays and the occasional memoir. I took courses like "The American Novel" not because I had a profound interest in the reading list outside of "Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas." I took enough film study courses that I saw a lifetime of movies before I ever worked in a video store.
And I never stopped to think about the cost.
Not until my parents got divorced, and suddenly that gravy train of higher education had to come to an end. I took my armload of credits to an academic counselor, after nearly six years without visiting such an office, and this helpful gentleman took those varied and sundry classes and wove a tapestry that became my creative writing degree. It could have been a double major, coupled with film, but that would have taken another year and a half and suddenly it was time for me to find my way out of this ivory tower and into the real world. I didn't have the time or the money, and so I was admonished not to take another English or film course, not a single one. Get one science and one history and get the heck out.
Which is what I did. Looking back, it would have been great for me to remember the name of that guy, the one who pasted together my bachelor's degree from six years of wandering in the woods of higher education. But I don't know. I don't have a strict accounting of the cost of that degree, but I am eternally grateful to my parents who paid for it. No outstanding loans. No debts. Just a head full of Hitchcock, Melville and the tiniest bit of Physics. For flavor. Forever.