Memories Can Be Fun

It's funny what the brain chooses to remember. After 36 years of living, there are many assorted, random, mostly non-sensical memories of my life stored away in the dusty closets of my mind.

Like the time when I was 8 years old and I decided to play "reverse mailman" in my neighborhood. Instead of delivering mail, I took all of the mail from everyone's mailboxes. Of course, after stealing all of the mail, I had no idea what to do with it, so I did what anyone else would do with stolen mail and tossed it down the storm drain. As you can imagine, the neighbors were not so thrilled about this at all. Someone called the cops. (Bastards! Always spoiling my fun!) Since tampering with the mail is a federal offense, the feds were called in also. Fortunately for me, I was questioned and released to the custody of my embarrassed parents and no charges were filed. I did have a federal police record until I turned 18 years old though.


Or, how about that time when I was in the 4th grade and I ate a whole box of Graham crackers one morning right before school. Some time, shortly before lunch, my stomach decided that it was over the whole "digesting the mounds of Graham crackers" thing, and I barfed up a big old slimy pile of Graham cracker stew right there in the middle of Miss Rafferty's English lesson. There are a few things that can happen to you in elementary school that the other kids will never, ever let you forget no matter how long you live. Barfing up Graham crackers in the middle of Miss Rafferty's English lesson is certainly one of those things. Oh yeah, to this day, I still cannot stand the smell or taste of Graham crackers.

Of course, there are also some much more pleasant memories trapped in my neurons. Pleasant memories are usually the ones that make someone else besides me look like the fool. Like that time when we were all at the Columbia Mall in the early 1980's. My father worked at a store there called United Optical. He was an optician. So, sometimes, we would all go there to meet him and have dinner together.

Well, this one time, we all got to the mall and met him at the store. He was just finishing up with a customer when we arrived, so my mother, my brothers and I told him that we would meet him at the pizza place. My sister, who was only about 4 or 5 years old at the time stayed at the store to wait for my father. Or, so we thought...

So, my father shows up at the pizza place about 5 minutes later without my sister. Of course, the first question out of my mother's mouth is, "Where's Anne?" My father had assumed that she was with us, and we assumed that she was with him. We only had to panic for a short while though because my sister showed up about two minutes later.

Something was a little odd about her though. Her pockets were bulging. Her legs and shoes were soaking, dripping wet and she jingled when she walked. So, my parents pressed her for details about where she had been. She explained to us that she had found a whole bunch of coins just laying there on the floor in the mall, so she collected them all up and stuffed them into her pockets.

Of course, the next obvious question for my sister was how did your feet get so wet? Well, it seems that the coins that she had "found" were the ones that were laying at the bottom of the mall fountain. My sister had actually been running around in the mall fountain snatching up all the coins that she could find and stuffing them in her pockets. To this day, I still laugh out loud every time I picture my little sister splashing around the mall fountain grabbing pennies, nickels and dimes and quarters while all the mall patrons were walking by. Obviously, someone had to see here in there, but no one stopped her. I only wish I had been there with a video camera!

*Sigh* Memories can be fun!