Last night I had the special and unique treat of attending the annual Association of Letter and Numeral Awards (or, the ALNAs). I try to catch it every year. It seems that a lot of people find it boring, but I’ve always found the letters of the alphabet, and especially numbers, to be quite interesting; perhaps not in their pure forms as such, but in their interaction with each other and in their subtle omnipresence in our everyday lives.

The awards show has never been televised. Ironically, the main networks have been quoted as saying that the show “just wouldn’t draw the right numbers.” I had always imagined that the show would be right at home on PBS, the very station that airs Seseme Street, on which so many numbers and letters have made wonderful guest appearances over the years. No one listens to me though.

No matter, the esoteric nature of the gala only ensures that I can continue to enjoy it in my own way. I can’t say that last night’s presentation was any better or worse than any other year’s, as they all seem to have their high and low points. As usual, they started off the night’s festivities with a musical number. It was the letter I and the letter U singing a duet. It was their version of Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gayle’s “Just You and I”. I thought kicking the whole shebang off with two vowels was a very good idea, but not having a consonant in there somewhere made it seem strangely incomplete.

The awards were announced and handed out at a nice pace, with most of the recipients keeping their speeches considerately curt. The exception was the award for Best Performance by a Grouping or Set of Numbers. This year’s winners were the numbers that make up Pi, and they really seemed to drag on forever. The funniest moment of the night came as the numbers 8 and 0 came out to present the award for Best Number. “Wow, 8,” 0 said, “that’s a nice belt!” Incidentally, the award for Best Number went to 1, which was no shock to anybody. However, I think the members of the audience really could have done without the sad display that came next, which was of that numeral jumping up and down for a good fifteen minutes shouting “I’m number 1! I’m number 1!” Sure, it was true in a very literal sense, but it also went a long way towards explaining to all in attendance why 1 is, indeed, the loneliest number.

As usual, after all of the awards were handed out, there was a forum and press junket. For me, this is the real highlight of every year’s program. It’s then that you really get to see the numbers and letters being themselves in a social setting that is far less formal than in the milieu of forming of words and larger numbers. For instance, it’s always interesting to watch the behavior of I, V, X, L, C, D and M toward the numbers. It seems as if the letters have yet to get over losing their jobs to the numbers after the fall of the Roman Empire. They deny that of course, C being the most adamant in that sentiment. But even as the letter that famously “is for cookie” attempted to set the record straight, I couldn’t help but think that M appeared somewhat vexed and X looked rather nonplussed.

The press hounded and prodded the numbers and letters. A few reporters asked genuinely intelligent questions, but most were there merely to dig up gossip and trivialize the proceedings. I can’t believe how little respect they showed, especially considering that their very livelihoods are based completely on the manipulation of the icons they were more or less subtly mocking. For many years there has been one subject that has been very touchy to the ALNA attendees: The growing widespread use of emblems and such that are not recognized as part of the alphanumeric family. “The Internet is both a blessing and a curse to us all”, said T. “The idea that a colon and the right side of a parentheses could suggest a smiley face scares the crap out of me.” A worried rumble of agreement echoed throughout the room. It wasn’t all gloom and doom though. K’s boisterous sense of humor broke through one particularly tense moment when she loudly announced that she and her two twin sisters are in desperate need of a new image consultant. 6 then stood up and jokingly asked “Well, what about me? Every time I get together with 9, people point at us and giggle!” As a result, it was then that Q finally voiced the obligatory bad joke that no ALNA night would be complete without: “Now there’s an irrational number.” Like every year, every letter and number in attendance emitted a simultaneous groan and chuckle, and it was wonderful.

The evening ended not long after, and one by one each symbol vacated the premises for another year. Their night to shine was over, but shine they did. As I type these words into my computer, I look at the keys and think of the tender respect I have for these tiny miracles that my fingers gently hover above and intermittently peck at. There’s A, situated nicely and peacefully next to two less popular letters, Q and Z, all nestled just below the row of numbers that seem to crown them illustriously. The picture it forms is somehow reminiscent of a high school senior class photo, with each character present. But this image seems far more ordered and civilized. Yes, numbers and letters living side by side on my keyboard, oh lord, why don’t we?

Once there was a snowman. He lived in a town populated only by little boys and girls. There were two types of children, at least as far as the snowman was concerned: huggers and stabbers. Huggers would come up to the snowman and throw their little arms around him. That made him feel good. Stabbers on the other hand would run up to him in the same manner as any hugger child, but then would pull out a sharp implement, such as a knife or shovel, and stick it deep into his softness. This hurt the snowman.

Unfortunately there was no way for the snowman to know by simply looking at the children which were huggers and which were stabbers. He could never know for sure until he was either stabbed or hugged. As much as he loved the hugs, the sharp thrusts from the stabbers were too painful to take for the snowman, and he eventually decided that he no choice but to avoid the children altogether.

Cutting off contact with the children of the town proved to be more difficult than he feared it would be. For one thing, he loved the company of the children, and often missed them. A larger problem, however, was the fact that the children could run so much faster than he could. Both the huggers and stabbers had no problem catching up to the snowman even as he ran in the opposite direction, always resulting in the subsequent embrace or violent attack that he was trying to avoid. In the frustration and growing desperation of the situation, the snowman became conscious of something he’d never known about himself before. Whether it was a hidden gift that was always there or something that simply developed as a result of his circumstances, he didn’t know. As it turned out, this snowman had the ability to protect himself from the children by breathing fire. The first few children to learn of the snowman’s newfound talent were quite surprised to say the least. And whether they were huggers or stabbers, those children were very sorry that they went near the snowman.

So the snowman was safe from being stabbed. However, the naïve children never stopped trying to hug him or stab him. They at least knew to keep their distance, but they just wouldn’t leave him alone. The snowman was forced to use his unique self-defense mechanism more often than he liked, as the very act of breathing fire in order to protect himself was very painful. And, in fact, he he eventually melted away in the act of self-preservation. But he was never a victim of the stabber children again. They all thought he just finally found a place to live.

He tried to think up an ironclad excuse not to go to the party, but he knew that none bore the right suit of armor to withstand the future attacks of his own guilty conscience, so he went. The most solid excuses, after all, must always be the ones we tell ourselves. He was quickly glad about his lack of imagination when it came to talking himself out of it. It was, after all, a going away party for a friend, and while he desperately hated goodbyes, he did love milestones. He loved being able to look back and say, “that’s when that ended.”

The impact of the departure hit home when they began watching old videos. Cliché, for sure, but if clichés never happened or were edited out of life, the average day would be twenty minutes long. Only one of the fold was leaving, but she was taking with her a gateway to other people and experiences he suddenly realized he would miss. It was only when, a few years before, it was all the only life he faced every weekend that he despised it. The videos reminded of him of what a dead end life it felt like to him to be at the time. As he watched, he refused to give into the persuasive, warped magic of nostalgia that’s made him rewrite his own history so many times before. But of course that didn’t last long. He thought about all those countless weekends in a house containing no one over 30, making up games with ping pong balls and cups of beer, drunkenly playing instruments in the garage, watching people be thrown in the pool. And all those camping trips when they went to places where he could see the stars again, even though he swore they didn’t look the same. Back then he was still young enough to find novelty in the dulling down of things.

He stayed a polite amount of time and piggybacked his goodbye onto another guest’s who had luckily chosen that moment to leave. Only a year before his drive home would have been much farther, now that he moved out of the valley. Then again, all his friends moved out of the valley, so his drive home would have in fact but much shorter a year ago. He got home and checked his mail. A Spin magazine, wrapped in plastic for some strange reason. Ah, because it’s accompanied with a letter asking him to renew his subscription. He ripped off the plastic and made a snap decision to cast the letter away with it into the trashcan. Somehow it felt like a time for letting the subscriptions run out on things. Not a decision to bring on an ending, more a lack of action that creates an absence of renewal. And that’s a different thing entirely.

Ah yes, the blog. Almost forgot I had one.

I’m sort of at a loss for things to say lately. Should I talk about the past? Should I talk about the post-past? (I guess they call that they present.) Should I make up more things to make my life sound more interesting than it is? Or is the mere description of my day-to-day life all that’s needed to entertain?

I don’t know. I think I’ll do away with my usual habit of thinking, and just say whatever comes out. Just to get the juices flowing.

Sometimes I like letting things get messy and dirty just for that feeling I get when I eventually do tidy up, and then for days afterwards I’m in the constant state of “Whoa…it’s so clean.”

In old cheesy 80’s action movies, whenever the hero would shoot and kill some nameless bad guy, I used to wonder if that character’s mother would hear about it, and how she would feel. I mean, yes, he was working for a terrorist trying to destroy the world, but she held him when he was a baby.

Along those lines perhaps, when I played soccer when I was little, I sometimes had problems getting myself properly motivated for games. What did I have against the other team? What did they do to me that would cause me to want to kick the ball into their territory and into their net? So I played defense, and I was very good, because I would become genuinely incensed when their offensive players got anywhere near my goal. Fucking dicks.

Alanis Morissette was really pissed off there for a while. I’m glad she seems to have dealt with it. What’s up with that Aflac duck though? Always yelling.

Quick story, and totally true: One time some guy named John that was dating my ex-girlfriend cast a love spell on me, which really worked, and then a week later he jumped out of the top floor of the Cathedral of Learning at Pitt University, thus turning the spell into a ten-year curse. I’m really glad that’s over.

There’s more to that story, but I just wanted to get the gist of it.

Mail trucks remind me of bees. Mail trucks: Stop, drop the mail, drive forward a little, repeat. Bees: land on flower, collect pollen, fly to the next one, repeat. And the front of old Jeeps look like those spiders with big eyes and smaller fake eyes under them. My friend Justin said that once in 11th grade and I thought it was so cool because I’d always thought that. Justin was always saying things I had thought all my life.

Dude! Look out for that giant snow spider behind you!

Don’t be scared. I’m a vehicle.