Chilly Reflections

The Weather Channel is telling me it's gonna snow forever in Eastern Kentucky/Southwestern West Virginia. And by forever I mean for at least Saturday. Regardless of how many flakes have fallen and will fall in the coming hours, one thing's certain - it's really, really cold.

So, I've been home for a little over a week or so now. Home - there's a phrase that means so much more than it used to.

During middle school, home was a trailer tailor-made for a family of car-filling clowns that five regular human beings were forced to live in. My half of the dorm room is possibly larger than the room I had in that hunk of metal.

During high school, home was humongous. A room littered with everything I owned, a collection of goods I gave refuge to over the years. Actions figures, DVDs, video games, random gifts and stolen things - all found their place with me.

It's not that simple anymore. Home, I've come to realize, is ambiguous as it gets.

Home is Gamble's soup beans and "fat jokes", Danesha's constant desire to use my laptop, making fun of Carla and going to Pizza Stop with Machelle and deciding that aside from us, the best thing Martin County has made is pizza. Eastern Kentucky definitely has the monopoly on that stuff.

Home is sitting on your butt for 15+ hours with Curtis at your side while you both beat Batman: Arkham Asylum at nearly the same time. Later, after you've went over 24 hours without sleep and crash, home is the Snuggie your mom bought you and a jacket that Erin says makes you look like a blue marshmallow for a pillow.

Home is deciding that it's a good idea to go to Speedy's mom's auction and walking away with two boxes of records, a record player you mistook for a table, some Star Wars toys, three 40 year old magazines, a chair and Speedy - for about six dollars. The chair and Speedy were free.

Home is an apartment in Huntington where your mom and Shawn, her boyfriend, live, where you opened your PS3 and had to take it back the next day. Ah, Christmas.

Home is going through the McDonald's drive-thru with your sisters at 2 o'clock in the morning and realizing that McDonald's at 2 o'clock in the morning sucks because they have 8 or so menu items available. Taco Bell is better anyway.

Home is running into familiar faces at 12 AM...still.

Home is singing along with the radio on our way to Page 3, always able to find something we know the words to.

Home is a lot of what it used to be...but it's not quite the same.

Home is ever-changing. It's watching John Wall run from basket to basket for a thunderous dunk from the eRUPPtion Zone. It's a baby gnome and his mommy. It's kicking ass with an Inferno Tempest deck. It's buying Aeric's food in exchange for cards. It's random visits from Corey Howell. It's Ho burgers. It's impersonating as Amber Arms, with her permission. It's answering phones in the Herald-Leader newsroom at Randy Medema's desk. It's Room 132, Holmes Hall. It's smiling every time I get a text from Erin asking if I want to eat with her and Brittany, cause the answer is always yes, or if not, I want it to be.

Home, now, is a hodge-podge of people, places and experiences that are so widespread that it can't be singled down to an individual state, county, city or holler. It's everywhere.

Right now, home is me, Curtis and Gauze each with laptop in hand watching the snow fall as we steal wi-fi from an unknown neighbor, waiting for the remastered version of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers to premiere at 6:00 AM. Next weekend it'll be A+ with Aeric and Curtis. Days after that it'll be a hug from Erin Hall that's long overdue but well worth the wait.

I'm looking forward to being home all the time. I guess it doesn't hurt that I'm always there, though.


---Joshua Aaron Moore