cool it

It's time to give it up and let it go.  This is the cooler I got free for opening a new account with United Carolina Bank when I arrived as a freshman at Davidson College.  You can still see the branding sticker and my name in so-of-the-time paint pen.  There were three banks on Main Street all competing for new student business, back in the days before the interstate banking laws were changed to allow, well, interstate banking.  If you didn't live in North Carolina and had an account, or your parents had one for you, in your home state, you couldn't just use the same account or transfer funds to an account in NC.

I've used this cooler for many events and travels since.  But it's "vacuum chamber" or whatever it is has become grossly distended so much that the bottom of the cooler curves convex and it wobbles like a Weeble.  I bought a new cooler for the trip to Pope Valley, and let this one go.  As I tossed it in the recycling in, I realized (1) that I got this as an incoming freshman; (2) that I just attended my 20-year reunion; and finally, (3) that makes this cooler three years older than the last guy who asked me out on a date.

Oh dear.