Childhood Realizations
I realize now why my back hurts so much and why it hasn't hurt this much since late Middle school/ early High school. I had a paper route back then. I was also seriously stressed for other reasons. But it was the damn bag that did it. And now I'm carrying a messenger bag again, equally as heavy, over some distance. Messenger bags and heavy things do NOT go well together. My poor, twisted spine and tweaked muscles are screaming for me to STOP using that bag --as I did last week when I had to walk the Shinjuku due to my lost pass-- but my other backpack is simply far too big (and too GREEN) for normal use.

Ugh.

It also hit me today that I lived in Germany while the wall was up. I don't know why this has never occurred to me before. The one year I spent there as a child was in... uh... 1986 (or so), which was several years before they tore it down. Even though I was young, I remember seeing the news when the wall came down. But I didn't realize until today that a divided Germany was part of my life. Of course, my parents wouldn't have talked with their four-year-old daughter about the wall, nor would I have understood or cared... but I was a precocious kid and nearly fluent in German so I'm sure that it somehow affected me, even though we didn't live in Berlin.

Strange thoughts from the cobweb corners.