Recognition

I have a Jansport backpack that I still use near-daily. I've had it for almost 10 years now (which also mean that it's almost 10 years since I graduated from high school. Gack.) and it's never been damaged, except for the zippers failing, but they've been replaced for free under warranty. It was my bookbag in college, it is my bag for work, my carry-on when I go on planes, my day-pack on holiday, my bag for hauling groceries... It rocks. It's purple. I will never give it up. (Ok. End of ode to my backpack.)

When I was in college, I added some patches and buttons to my backpack, which are still there now. There are two homemade Radiohead-related ones, using symbols out of OK Computer. One you can hardly see cuz it's purple ink on purple cloth on a purple bag, but the other is big and it's purple on yellow, and it's of a figure kind of like the generic woman/man restroom symbols and beneath it it says "Lost Child". There are also three small buttons, one of the logo of a Portland record label that I think no longer exists (Candy Ass), and two for Belle & Sebastian. They're kinda vague B&S though, like they don't say the name of the band on them, one just has a girl on a bike and there's a little license plate that says "Belle"; the other has 8 drawings of instruments on it that represent the 8 original members of the band and what they played. Oh, and just today I added my new Magic Marker button.

So the other day, I was heading home and standing in the crowd (they don't do lines here) waiting to get on the bus. Suddenly a guy near me says "Hey, a Belle & Sebastian button!" though in Dutch, which really sounds the same as in English but with a funny accent. And I realized he was referring to me. I turned around and found that the guy who spoke was about 2 people away from me, a very Dutch tall, blond guy, sort of geeky/indie, someone you could imagine liking B&S. So I smiled and he said (I think) something about me having good music taste, though I wasn't quite sure what he said at the end, but I definitely heard "hebt goed muziek smaak" so it wasn't just me projecting what I wanted to hear. I said thanks and wanted to say more but I guess I felt weird talking about it with all these people standing there listening. It made me really happy though. I believe he was the first person to recognize those buttons. Or at least the first person to say anything about it. I've had many comments on the Lost Child patch, from people I know and strangers, and I think someone (who I knew) asked what the buttons were about, but no one's known what they were in the 6 or 7 years I've had them on there. I'm sure the guy would have liked to have known that. Sorry, Mr Stranger Guy, for not telling you that I thought it rocked that you recognized the buttons.