Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about something that happened about 2 years ago in one of my classes.

I teach industrial design to 19-23 year old students and also graduate student who are usually mid 20’s to 30’s and older.

While helping an undergrad with some computer prototyping, I resaved her file by adding my three initials to the beginning of her file name in order for her to more easily differentiate between her original and my suggestions.

“Why did you say that?” She asked.

“Say what?” I countered. I literally had not made a sound.

”Shaking my head.” She explained.

“I didn’t say anything”.

She pointed to the screen explaining “Right here on the file name. You added smh ‘Shaking My Head’ to the beginning.”

I looked at her and with an appropriate pause replied “Those are my initials, Steven Michael Herrnstadt.”

”oh.” “Really?”

“Yes”

All I could think of was that it really explained a lot about my life.

Later I decided that given my family’s sense of humor, it is entirely possible that my parents accidentally discovered time travel, emerged 60 years into the future, discovered emojis and associated acronyms then came back to 1953 chuckling to themselves. And later, during my naming, snickered in low voices to each other “this is great, in a few decades it’ll be hilarious.”

Some days I feel older than other days....

smh 2018