Twenty years ago today I moved into my first-year college dorm at UVa.

A couple of weeks ago it was my 20th anniversary of leaving Japan for good. From Japan, my family flew to Hawaii for a week, and then we flew home to the NYC area and lived in a company-provided apartment in midtown Manhattan for a week before driving down to UVa to move me into my dorm.

Things I remember happening during that last week before college — 20 years ago this past week:

• watching one of the special summer episodes of 90210 (it must have been a repeat, according to this episode guide)
• the Crown Heights riots
• Hurricane Bob
• the failed coup d’état in the Soviet Union
• writing “I am gay” in my diary for the first time

(Also, my mom saw Jerry Orbach in the laundry room of the apartment building we were staying in.)

Wow, if I could have predicted how much would happen in the subsequent 20 years…