The Finite

As some of you may have learned from Facebook, I opted to actually “walk”. That is, to undergo the pomp and pageantry of the graduation ceremony. That means renting a gown, getting tickets, and, the most difficult part, giving my family directions to come down to Indiana.

I also took this once in a lifetime opportunity (hopefully), to take advantage of the $100 I’m paying to rent black ankle-length robes.

As we assembled in the Armory, Huy demanded to know, “Did you bring it?”

In a blink, I produced my wand and posed defensively. (No, I had not practiced this…)

How did I do this so quickly? The answer was and had to be… magic.

Really, it had been concealed the entire time we waited, sheathed along my left forearm. Because when you’re assailed by a dark wizard (or some crazy person) with Unforgivable Curses, (as Moody reminds us) you must be prepared.

I kind of went on a shopping spree at the end of P3 year. All the way from Goodwill to Target. Actually just those two places. Spent like, a hundred dollars. And picked up like fifteen pounds of business casual.

You see, I never actually bought a shirt before. Like, by myself. So this was quite the big-boy activity for me. Up til then, all my shirts were hand-me-downs from my uncle (15½, 33/34). You may have noticed me wearing one of those excessively baggy dark blue shirts on lab days at Purdue.

So after willingly setting foot in a fitting room, I finally found out what shirt size I am. (14½ 32/33 on low humidity days and barring large meals.)

I also came to a startling revelation about what t-shirts I’d been wearing. With all the free t-shirts in high school and at Purdue, I equivocated between an adult medium and large t-shirts. Why? Because the shirts I got from Mom were medium and larges. They were hand-me-downs (probably from the very same uncles.) and I never questioned why my t-shirts didn’t fit me. So when it came time for me to choose my own size of t-shirt (yay, Robotics team) I went with large because that’s what I had become accustomed to. Despite how baggy they were. I never knew that they weren’t supposed to be that baggy so I just accepted it. And then I attend a big ten university for a couple of years, and came to the shocking realization a year ago that I’m an adult small.

Now the pants were a different story which was almost entirely the same. I had been wearing 32/33 everything for a while. Then through the magic of fried food, high fructose corn syrup and puberty, I lost all of my freshman-year-dining-courts weight. No, really, my diet consisted solely of BLTs, chocolate milk, and cereal and all I did besides my internship was play Fallout 3. Ended up dropping to a perfect 30×30 (barring humidity and large meals). Not “skinny jeans skinny” (NEVER!) but a better-looking cut for sure.

It’s also kind of annoyingly metaphorical. (I know! Enough with the symbolism, right?) that back during this time in pharmacy school when I was so misanthropic toward pharmacy people. I didn’t even fit in my own clothes, much less my burgeoning profession. And it wasn’t until I found my own self-worth and abandoned cynicism that things turned around and I literally began to “fit”.

I’m beginning to think I have a problem with literary motifs.