#exclamations

I think I started the practice in college which is weird since I didn't know that many people in the different classes I took that well. It was largely big classes filled with strangers.

Still...

Somewhere in those five years I started writing down memorable quotes I heard in class. I wrote them in the margins of my notes or at the top of the page. If I heard it and something about it hit me in any way, there it would appear somewhere around my notes for the class.

After university, I signed up for the Music & Video Business program at the Art Institute of Seattle. Since I traveled the entire program with the same cohort, there were plenty of quotes that made their way into the pages of my notes. So by the time I was released into the wild, my ears were finely tuned to the quotable wherever I happened to find it.

Now, my habit was to carry around a note pad that captured everything I learned, everything I had to remember in my professional career. And of course quotes found their way into those pages. It's a practice that continued as paper and pen gave way to digital notes on my smartphone.

Of course getting married, becoming a father, that was quite fertile ground for plenty of exclamations and conversations that caught my ear. And eventually the best of the best, the most memorable found their way into a section of our family Christmas letter reserved for just such entertainment and insight.

So.

This afternoon we're playing Monopoly. Monopoly, that is, specifically themed by the Harry Potter book and film franchise. And during this game, a thing is said—two things are said, actually—that catch my attention. And before I think to write the first one down, Linzy says she's looking to make this year's cut. That section of our old Christmas letter in which, yes, our daughter is quoted often.

Adorable that she remembers those old letters, by the way. What really captures my attention though is her admission to documenting the same thing in her life. Memorable quotes by anyone and everyone around her that she documents on her phone, organized by person.

Dang.

And just like that.

I passed on a tradition.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “exclamation.’” Add an exclamation mark to your title or the first word/sentence of your post and just keep writing. Have fun! We spent the day bingeing Jurassic Parks. One of my favorite explanations is in the second movie. When Doctor Malcolm says, “Oooh, ahhh, that’s how it always starts. But then later there’s running and…