Memories

Yeh It's just as well that this is not a podcast or a Youtubey thing,  so you don't have to listen to me wailing away along with Barbra Streisand. As a singer, I'd make a damn fine gardener, or brain surgeon, or telepathic flying crazy cow, cos let's face it, I am a shit singer, not that it stops me, it just encourages all around me to test out new ear plug designs, and makes Dog try to escape over the 2 metre fence.

'Memories are so beautiful and yet so painful to remember and easy to forget'.... yeh I know I got it wrong but no-one is listening so who cares huh? Do you sing along to the radio and then suddenly a moment of clarity smashes into your ears with the devastation akin to wacking an overripe pawpaw with a golf club and you hear the 'real' words? I am always amazed when these proper, 'real' lyrics blare out clearly and plainly and I am faced with the dilemma of having to change the habit of decades or pretend I didn't notice.

I was reading, 'What Alice Forgot' by Liane Moriarty and so she doesn't miss out any sales royalties and to save having to make a big SPOILER ALERT warning, all I'll tell you is it's a story about Alice, who lost her memories of the last 10 years. She was well enough to be let loose in the world, but her ideas and attitudes were 10 years out of date. Did she manage? Did she like the same people? Was she interested in the same stuff? Well buy the book by all means and find out.

So I've been thinking about the last 10 years and weighing up how disappointed I'd be if I woke up one day and didn't know what has gone on... Yeh difficult to do when you know what you might be gonna forget, but that's the way my mind has been rolling.

Medically, certainly I would not be the least bit sad to not know all the shit that has gone down, although on close inspection I might go a little nutty- well all right, a little more nutty,  trying to figure out all the scars. Some relationships have shriveled up and died without warning or good explanation and that is a shame, on who I am not prepared to say. People have died and some who would be no loss to the world are still kicking around. I do wonder though if there would be an inexplicable cringe reaction to shitful people, even if the memory was gone, and I guess that would depend on the degree of initial shit. But if I was in the book, I wouldn't know this stuff.  Not too bad a black hole huh?

But mostly the last 10 years have been pretty fabbo, and it would be more than a bit miserable to not remember some of this stuff except that I wouldn't know I didn't know it, if you know what I mean. Cos NOT remembering stuff that made you proud or wonder or joyful would surely leave you less than you are.

My reactions today might be slower and possibly less intense, dare I say it, more mature and circumspect, than 10 years ago, but outcomes would not be wildly different with or without the knowledge and experience of a decade.

Possibly I would just get myself into more trouble today, if my ten years ago self appeared out of nowhere, and spat out her strong objections to stuff, cos at the very least I am no longer as spritely as I once was and I am much less able to quickly leg it away if I found myself in a tricky spot, where escape was necessary after my mouth spilled over.

Anyway I am sure that I have forgotten ridiculously more than I remember, and I am also pretty sure that some of the things that I am pretty sure I remember, perhaps happened differently to my memory, cos we all surely lie to ourselves from time to time.

And then there's the stuff we remember. Even though my girl and I were under the same roof some of the stuff she remembers, I have long ago forgotten. Yesterday we were discussing punishments and she recalled very clearly being grounded for almost the whole of year 10. I had forgotten all that. Yeh she was systematically a bit naughty and so would slide from one misdemeanor to the next. I am not sure what she did that was so terrible, but this might have been the year that I caught her not being where she was meant to be and driving in, skidding to a halt and yelling for her to get in the car. In retrospect it was not a big deal, but at the time it was worthy of another month of going nowhere. I had forgotten all about that until yesterday.

I am pleased that mostly good memories remain and that the shit often melts away, unless it's to do with your mother or other really bad things of course.