Roaming tangents

I was going to write a long and probably whiny post on workplace culture and how I feel so meeesunderstooooood at my current job and how I am soooo alooonnnne and how they are all extroverts and annoy the living snot out of me, but I just can't. I do genuinely like my coworkers, and I need to stop feeling sorry for myself. If I don't like it, I can always leave. And let's face it: I have a pretty good gig, and don't need to start whining.

So, onwards. 

To ... who knows. But I did want to relate this little anecdote which will be amusing only to those of you who a.) know what my master's thesis was about and b.) have a reasonably sound knowledge of Viking armaments and if you know the answers to both of those -- wow, you know me very well! And hey, we should get together! Anyway, suffice to say that I did my Master's thesis on pre-Conquest Northern European history --- otherwise known, in some parts (specifically the parts I was studying) as the Viking Age. And it irritates me no end to hear people, when I mention that, say -- hey, yeah,  the fat people with braids and the horns on their helmets! Because this is a Victorian reconstruction of Vikings, as I recall, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual people who sailed forth in longboats from Scandinavia for the pillaging etc. 

So. As I was saying. A few days ago my son and I were in the kitchen. I'm making dinner, he's playing around doing his thing. He tells me we are playing pirates, and relates all kinds of things to me about the pirate game we are playing and how we're on a ship and he's the captain and we're sailing here and there and I'm kind of half listening because, hell, trying to cook dinner, which isn't something I'm that great at (I give you for example tonight's dinner which in the end was pizza delivery because I made something COMPLETELY INEDIBLE.)

Sorry, another tangent.

Anyway, so he's playing away, and then suddenly announces to me that he's not a pirate anymore, he's a Viking. And I rather carelessly ask how we tell the difference, since we're pretending and all, between the pirates and the Vikings, and he says -- I kid you not -- "The Vikings have horns on their helmets."

WHHHAAAAA??

I have to laugh. Seriously, if you'd asked the very committed and studious 24 year old me if her child would ever have uttered such a statement, I'm sure I would very seriously have told you it was impossible that any child of mine would make such a grievous error. But here we are. Life has changed. I have changed, my priorities have changed, and I haven't thought about Viking battle gear for many a year. I miss it, I miss the academic life and my pursuits, I miss loving every single word I read, of being excited every time I opened a book. I don't miss the politics, I don't miss wondering what I would do with a PhD in Viking history in this country, I don't miss a lot of other things. But I do somethings think, as I pull together yet another proposal on engineering wastewater, that that life might still have been better. 

And I miss it.