In the year 2000, there wasn’t much in life I loved more than award shows. Not much has changed since then, but the 1999 Video Music Awards marked a pronounced shift in my pop culture trajectory. I hadn’t stopped talking about the show for months and I re-watched it endlessly on my VHS recording. I …
The Ballad of an Eighth Grade Gladiator
Clack-clack-clack-clack. The chorus of clacking rang out in the small computer lab as tiny fingers pressed down on the brand new keys of Macintosh keyboards. Like a forest of chatty insects, the clacking filled the room of elementary school children. We were new to this—this “typing” thing—and the foreign and measured coordination required to …
