I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you hear yourself saying something brilliant

or revealing a deep insight you didn't even realize you possessed?

This happens to me all too rarely, but it did happen recently.

I was getting ready to go to my college reunion,

so I was thinking back on my life during college and right after college.

I remembered that I'd kept an issue of a zine called Planet Girl

that was created by some friends of mine in San Francisco decades ago.

I pulled my copy down from the shelf, it's labeled number two,

and from the editor-in-chief's note about why it took a year to publish this second issue,

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that issue number three was never produced.

I was looking at it when my daughter Eleanor knocked on the door to my office.

I showed her my copy, which she found fascinating.

Several of my friends were involved in putting this together, I told her.

I see their names all over it.

The photo on the cover is a picture of a friend and my roommate wrote several of the articles.

Were you involved with it, she asked?

No, I answered.

In fact, I said to Eleanor, I vaguely knew they were working on it,

but it never occurred to me to try to get involved.

Why not, she asked?

I thought they were just playing at making art.

...