Time Machine: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

I awoke and wanted to listen to the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. On my iPhone, I give the command to Siri that interrupts my audiobook, Heretics of Dune.

The Lauryn Hill album takes me back in time to late in the year 1998:

• I’m in Air Force tech school (technical job training) at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi. Before December comes, I’m age 17.
• I go to class from 3pm until 11pm. It’s called “T” Shift. My night shift classmates and I feel we’re elite because we don’t have to set our weekday alarm clocks for 5am like our day shift (called “S” Shift) counterparts.
• I’m infatuated with a young lady. She left MEPS* in Montgomery when I did to start Basic Military Training in the same training squadron in San Antonio, Texas. She’s short and quiet. I recall her from Basic marching toward the end of her flight as troops are sorted in the order of height. I recall most of her perfect face being covered by braids. I’m excited to see her and her tech school dorm is opposite mine at Keesler.
• We meet again and often thereafter.
• I have a book with blank pages. The book is a high school graduation gift given to me in-person by a cousin who must have foreseen how important writing would become to me — thank you, Luverne. I begin to fill the book with thoughts about the young lady who has shown me attention — more attention than any young lady so far. I write about her both romanticizing and wooing. I share with her some of my letters to her, about her. Some of the letters/poems I write on torn pages from the book to give her. Of those torn page letters, hers are the originals and solo copies.
• I impress myself. I really like writing.
• Nothing Even Matters—The young lady graduates from her tech school before me and accepts an assignment in the panhandle of Florida. Later, I receive an assignment to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. I decide the assignment is too far from the young lady who has promised me no future together beyond friendship. I swap my Elmendorf assignment with a classmate who received one to Maxwell Air Force Base Gunter Annex in Montgomery, Alabama. He’s extremely eager to swap the Deep South assignment. The exchange is the equivalent of my giving away Park Place for Baltic Avenue.
• My senior tech school roommate leaves me a pair of computer speakers that he used with a portable CD player to listen to K-Ci and JoJo’s Love Always — thanks, Small. Later, I buy my own copy of the CD because the awesome album inadvertently becomes a second Time Machine — Aquemini by OutKast becomes another Time Machine for this period. The Altec Lansing speakers survive with me for the next 23 years and sit atop a dresser in my bedroom today.
• I would leave Keesler at the end of January 1999 surprisingly on time given my academic track record. I move to Montgomery with an “S” Shift classmate who’s in the Air National Guard and kind enough to let me ride shotgun in her Toyota Corolla — thanks, Jan. Like the young lady, her hometown is Montgomery, AL.
• Sweetest Thing—I learn a lot about myself emotionally by writing in the blank book’s pages and listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on repeat. Lauryn’s art makes me want to write, and likely influenced many of my ideas about love and relationships. I enjoy reading my poetry and letters. I enjoy remembering. I’m marking a significant period of my adulthood with songs on the album. I’m creating a reference point for my Time Machine.

*MEPS = Military Entrance Processing Station. My MEPS was Gunter Annex coincidentally where I would get stationed for my first assignment.