Something Good #57: The Persistence of Memories
When last we met, I shared some of my persistent memories, or as I regrettably dubbed them, “amygdalar earworms”—moments from your life that possess no overwhelming significance but which you think about all the time.
I asked you to share some of your own and received many excellent replies. Here are a few.
From Nick Parish:
When I was around eleven or so, our family was on vacation somewhere in the Southern United States. I think it was Florida. We were at a pirate-themed miniature golf place, playing a round. It was evening, after dinner. We were consistently playing faster than the family ahead of us (maybe trying to get home before it got too late?), and so as we'd arrive at the next hole, they were about to start.
There were two parents and two older children in that group, and one, a boy, was maybe sixteen or seventeen. He was singing some sort of ballad, I think it was "A Groovy Kind of Love" but I also somehow remember it being a Beatles song. It's unclear. Either way, everyone else seemed to be ignoring him except me, and the performance, in these little snippets of chorus a few seconds or so at a time in passing, felt like the most tremendous gift, like, a secret light he was shining on me. I remember it was the very first time an older kid had even acknowledged my existence.
From Quirek the Bird:
I was at a competitive event once, and I was very nervous. I didn't notice that this cute guy was making eyes at me until my friend pointed it out to me. Sure enough, when I looked over at him he gave me a charming grin. I never even spoke to him after that but I think about him every time I feel lonely.
This reminds me of one of my own: I was waiting for the bus on Avenue du Parc one freezing winter morning when a blast of cold air hit me in the face. I grimaced, and a woman walking past thought I was smiling at her and smiled back.
Quirek also writes:
At our church there is a choir loft. There are several chandeliers between the front of the church and the choir loft, and I've often wished I could jump from the choir loft to the chandeliers and swing from them. This occurred to me when I was five and every time I go to a service I think about that.
This also prompted a memory, of a mall in downtown Montreal that had an elevated food court. Many times, eating before a movie, my friends and I discussed how we would escape it via parkour if we were being pursued by our enemies, of which we had none.
From Fiona Foster:
Grade six, annual lice check. Parent volunteers comb gently through our hair with pointed wooden sticks in the school library. I am sent on to the visiting public health nurse for a second look. Her name is Kathy Best and she is tall and thin, with a bony jaw and brown permed hair. She asks if I have been using Pert Plus. I have. She says, "People usually rinse shampoo well, and conditioner just so-so. With these combination shampoo and conditioners, you only get the so-so rinse, that's why little flakes are left behind. You can go back to class." I think about Kathy Best and Pert Plus every single time I wash my hair, once or twice a week, for the next 33 years.
From alex:
I was 19, living in the dorms in my sophomore year of college. one afternoon I was walking down the stairs, probably going out for a quick cig. For whatever reason I stopped at the top of the stairs and thought to myself, “I wonder if I can remember this exact moment with any detail, even though (or perhaps because) it’s so unremarkable.”
I do, from the color of the walls (faded minty green), the texture of the floor under my feet (a band of gray rubber nonstick flooring), the silence of an empty dorm hallway, and the specific quality of light (a late March-ish afternoon in Portland on a rare sunny day).
Similarly, from SP:
When I was younger, I used to play a game called 'Before You Know It' which was just about the passage of time. The general premise was that before I knew it, that point in time - perhaps something I was dreading, or a dull stretch of time before something I was looking forward to - would be done and gone and I'd be out the other side of it.
I only have a clear memory of one of those times. I was eleven years old and in my first week of secondary school, walking on the path past the hockey pitch down to double biology class. I thought to myself: before you know it, you'll have finished school and the seven years you spent here will have flown by, and year seven double biology will seem like no trouble at all. That was nearly twenty-five years ago now.
From Nathan Curry:
Would seeing a 14 year old illegally reviewing cigarettes on youtube and saying “it's pretty good, I love it” to every one, qualify for one of these?
Answer: yes. (Nathan and I became briefly obsessed with a teenaged Canadian cigarette reviewer who would sneak cigs in his parents’ basement and give his whispered critiques to the camera. We still say “it’s pretty good, I love it,” all the time.)
From Graham van Pelt, whose music you should listen to:
A hot afternoon in Raleigh, North Carolina, late 2000s. Walking with two friends near a strip mall. A perspiring elderly man sitting on a bench shouts at us: "Who let the dogs out?"
This week’s #nojacketsrequired comes to us via reader Megan Johnston. Thank you Megan! If you have a discovery of your own… you know what to do. (Send it to me.)
Bonus track:
The picture at the top was taken in Budapest in 2003. Every few weeks I’ll send you Something Good, usually on a Wednesday. If you liked it, please share and/or subscribe. That’s all I ask.
