Maybe if you were raised in the 1980s, you were occasionally threatened with the “permanent record.” A fight with a classmate might be put on your permanent record, and you dimly imagined that you would have to answer for this action for the rest of your life.
I remember the freedom I felt as it dawned on me that my permanent record did not exist. Not even during that particularly naughty time in fifth grade when I stopped doing my English homework for Mrs. Dunmore. I don’t know why, but for six months I just became a real brat about that. Colleges didn’t care about my elementary school grades anyway. In some dim way, there were “marketers” who cared what music I listened to. But they could not see the mixtapes I made. They couldn’t even really tell it was me buying any particular record, or how many times I listened to it at home. I eventually inherited my mother’s beat-up 1992 Saturn sedan, and although I had many memorable drives in it — times of exultation or moods of depression that I’ll remember for a lifetime — there is no record of these drives ever happening, beyond what exists in the infinite mind of God.
Comments