brian skinner > 1991

	the unwritten resume excerpts from a letter written in 1991, when I was 26 (everybody has stories to tell — here are tidbits from mine)
old	I have lived longer than most of the people alive today, longer than most of the people who've ever lived.
experienced	I've traveled farther, seen more things, met more people, than my ancestors could imagine. I've been shown more of history, of the present, of the future, than most ever dreamed of.
numb	I've seen the mass graves in Leningrad, large, low, grassy berms, marked by simple granite blocks, thousands of bodies each, berm after berm stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see, half a million people dead.
exposed	I've lived under the fallout of Chernobyl, lain open on an operating table, had my teeth pulled from my mouth by a stranger.
immoderate	I have fasted and binged, stayed awake for days and slept for days, drunk stolen alcohol and driven cars too fast, experimented with illicit drugs.
meek	I've been hit because they didn't like the color of my skin. I've been hit because I went to school. I've been hit because I stayed home from school. I've been hit because I backed down. I've been hit because I talked back.
quiet	I've been a friend to people dealing with abortion and suicide, alcoholism and bulimia, loneliness and cancer, homosexuality and virginity, love and infidelity.
libidinous	I've had sex with strangers and with dear old friends, men & women, gays & lesbians, virgins & veterans.
foolhardy	I've been lost in the forests of Nova Scotia, lost in the caves of Kentucky, lost in Feynmen's Quantum Electro Dynamics, lost in the subways of Leningrad.
outgoing	I've traded on the black market with Soviets, proposed a marriage of convenience to a South African, shared soda with a tobacco farmer in Kentucky, stayed the night with an alcoholic in Kansas who we met on the street, gone drinking with a Scot who'd never traveled more than 30 miles from home, spent hours with a homeless man in the subways of London, eaten hors d'oeuvres with a Nobel laureate.
nomadic	I've traveled by ships on the ocean, jets in the sky, hovercrafts on the water, trains on the land, amphibious assault vehicles in the marsh, busses in the city.
impetuous	I've jumped out of a plane, entombed myself in a sensory depravation tank, run a half-marathon, biked a continent, contemplated murder and attempted suicide, smuggled stolen goods out of the Soviet Union, shoplifted, stolen a car stereo, been frisked by police, failed a class, skipped a final, set a curve, gotten straight As, cheated on tests and scorned cheaters, done detention and received honors.
industrious	I've worked for a company of 5, and a company of 45,000. I've worked for the government, for industry, for academia, for myself, and for no one. I've worked cleaning bathrooms and hauling anchor lines, programming vector processors and NeXT cubes, selling tampons, tortillas, and trojons, trucking toxic waste and solar cars.
reckless	I've driven a car through a barricade, pedaled a bike through a desert, sailed a boat through a storm, paddled a canoe through rapids, landed a plane in the wind, landed a parachute on a sunny day, rappelled myself down an island cliff.