HISTORY SHROUDED BY BLANKET OF TIME
This column originally appeared on Wicked Local.







My wife and I sat on the couch with our yellow lab positioned in her customary place between us on “her” blanket.  Startled, Natalie (my beautiful wife, not the dog) yelled out, “Look at this!”  She held up the end of the blanket.  There was a gaping hole in it.  Although she refuses to retrieve things, our dog Hannah does have a penchant for interior decorating.  With a blanket in front of her, she will casually rearrange things until they are perfectly positioned, moving them about with her mouth.   Apparently, while I thought she was redecorating her space earlier in the day she had actually been gnawing away at the blanket.  I took the damage in stride.  I have a hard time getting mad at a dog.  Maybe it’s the floppy ears.  Maybe I just understand that dogs are sometimes unable to control their instinctual impulses.  I expressed to my wife that I somehow knew that the blanket would eventually be destroyed by a dog.  I just didn’t know when.  Yet here was the culprit, staring at me waiting for a reaction that would not come (the dog, not my wife).  I whispered to myself, “I bought that blanket in 1990.”  Hardly as introspective as I am, my wife quickly mimicked me as she sometimes does, “I bought this blanket in 1990!”  Enough said. 
I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about my life since I had purchased that blanket.  I bought it in 1990 at a shop in Boston not long after I had moved into a $395.00 a month apartment on Huntington Ave.  It was one of those Grateful Dead-type stores that reeked of incense and marketed skeleton related garb.  It’s a smaller blanket, although heavy with knitted pastel stripes.  I had cash in my pocket, was attempting to build something resembling a home in my new space around the corner, and thought that I had stumbled upon a household item of unique character and quality – so I bought it.  I never really used the blanket for what a blanket is supposed to be used for, covering up and keeping warm, which is why it has probably lasted so long.  I attempted to lie still and not disturb my sleeping beauty (my wife, not the dog).  With some advanced math (for me), I realized that the blanket has been with me longer than the number of years I had been alive when I bought it.  Reminiscent of the song by Johnny Cash, that blanket has been everywhere (man!). 
Indeed, the blanket was a somewhat dignified addition to my Huntington Ave. apartment and adorned a horribly uncomfortable futon couch as the Gulf War began in 1991.  The blanket accompanied me to my first place in the North End, an apartment I was in when Tom Menino took over for Ray Flynn as Mayor of Boston, for the Perfect Storm, an attempt by Vice-President Dan Quayle to spell the word potato, and for the funeral of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.  With a move to Malden the blanket acted as a shade to keep the sun from glaring through the bedroom window.  Oklahoma City became an early site of domestic terrorism and O.J. Simpson slowly led the L.A. police on that famous highway pursuit.  New Boston, New Hampshire proved to be the perfect New England home for the blanket as Boston celebrated the 100th running of the marathon and, fittingly, the O.J. verdict was handed down. My return to the North End was greeted by the April 1st Blizzard of 1997, and later the tragic death of Princess Diana.  A year in Gloucester uncovered Louise Woodward’s teary reaction to a shaken verdict, Bill Clinton debated what the meaning of the word “is” is, and also denied having sexual relations with that woman.  JFK Jr. commandeered his final flight when I moved back to the North End for the last time which would also, horrifically, be the place where I would experience the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001.  The Red Sox actually managed to win the 2004 World Series while I living in Somerville, and I had relocated to Scituate by the time of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.  That blanket has been with me every step of the way.  And now here I was, casually looking into the eyes of this unknowing critter who had playfully decided to chew a hole in this 27 year old blanket, a dog inspired event that has caused at least half my life to flash before my eyes. 
I assume there will be a blanket that will take its place and it might even last as long.  I wonder what events we will be looking back on in 2044?   Maybe an older, wiser Pee Wee Herman will reside in the White House responding to criticism with his once thought to be immature response, “I know you are but what am I?” - a comeback that is sadly not far from our current political reality.  As I think back over the past 27 years and the subsequent life of this relatively insignificant blanket, one thing is for sure - the next 27 years will be filled with incredible surprises, some of which we would currently characterize as beyond belief.
And I am not pulling the wool over your eyes. 



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