This week’s Friday Five, which all involve signing off of one kind or another:
1. What does it say in the signature line of your e-mails?
My name, e-mail address, and URL. How boring. But as some of you know, I don’t even use it anyway. In college, for a while after I first discovered Rent, I’d sign off with “No day but today.”
2. Did you have a senior quote in your high-school yearbook? What was it? If you haven’t graduated yet, what would you like your quote to be?
My quote was “I will play the swan / And die in music,” which is from Shakespeare’s Othello (V.ii). Yeah, I was a drama queen-in-training. I also quoted from Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along in my valedictory speech. (Thom says, “And they didn’t know you were gay?!”)
3. If you had vanity plates on your car, what would they read? If you already have them, what do they say?
Well, I don’t have a car to begin with, but since this is hypothetical-land, I’ll play along. I’d probably try to get a plate approximating “Rebel Prince,” but unfortunately truncating it to seven or fewer characters is awkward, to say the least. RBLPRNC? RPRINCE? REBELP? (Make your own license-plate graphic at ACME, also the place to make personalized candy hearts and Dymo-type labels. Remember those? My dad had a Dymo labelmaker that I used to play with as a kid. No doubt part of my childhood fascination with, I don’t know, office and library supplies?)
4. Have you received any gifts with messages engraved upon them? What did the inscription say?
No, I don’t think I have. Well, I suppose I’ve received pens with my name on them. (Watch, I’m going to get flooded with e-mails along the lines of, “How could you forget that desk clock which I had lovingly engraved?!”) When I give gifts of books, I do like to write an inscription when possible, at least our names and the date and place of the gift-giving. I think it makes a nice memento.
5. What would you like your epitaph to be?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a line or two of Walt Whitman or A. E. Housman. Heck, why not my senior quote (see number 2, above)? It works.
You were valedictorian? Wow, now I’ll feel like I have to salute you or something next time I see you.