There's a dude here fixing the kitchen sink. I threatened to call a plumber and send my landlord the bill, so he finally decided to call me back and tell me that he was sending his own plumber. Which is good, cause the last time he tried to fix something himself we ended up with the sink that never drains. The plumber looked under the sink and he said, 'Boy Jimmy really Mickey Moused this.' Jimmy is our landlord. And the plumber made fun of his plumbing skills. I laughed. Then he started telling me about when he was here on 9/11 and he was watching the footage on the TV, whoever was living here at the time had some plumbing problems and he went on for a bit. Then he couldn't remember where his channel locks were. They were in his back pocket. So he remembers being here over ten years and what problem the people were having and where the TV was, but he didn't remember that he put his channel locks in his back pocket. Memory is funny that way. For example, I don't remember what was going on exactly when mom told us that grandma died but I know it was late at night and she had to wake me up and about a week later my brother was upset and crying and mom asked if he could sleep with me and I said no. And I still feel horrible about it. I remember things like that all the time. Literally all the time. I always remember when I do things that I regret, or that were stupid, or when I lied. I remember it vividly. It's like an intense guilty conscience that plagues me with a laundry list of events reminding me that I should've acted differently because it would've taken a moments thought to just keep my mouth shut and not make a crass joke about church. (That's a stupid story: Jeremy's friends girlfriend couldn't make it out to dinner cause she had choir practice and I made some comment about church and his friend says, she loves to sing, and I said, so do I but I won't go to church for it. Seriously. I had to say that? One of the many reasons that friend considered me disrespectful and probably still doesn't like me.)
The point of this is that there's this show called 'Unforgettable' which I've never watched. It's about this chick who has a super autobiographical memory, which means she can remember every event that ever took place in her entire life with perfect clarity. She can probably even remember being in the womb. (Jeremy made that joke about me when I was telling him about Scooter's kindergarten graduation and the swing set I was playing on when we passed the spot in the park where it was held. Scotty's four years older than me. So I was like, 1 at the time.) And I was thinking, there's only a handful of people in the entire world with this ability.
Guys, what if I'm one of them?
Me, Marilu Henner, and a couple other people whose names weren't mentioned in that article that I read. But then there was this test and it had a bunch of dates on it and the dates meant nothing to me because they were in 1989 and I was born in 1988 so even if my tiny not even first birthday celebrated self was watching the news then, (I wasn't. I don't even watch it now.) those events were not relevant to me. But the test says to remember what happened to you on those dates. January 30th, 1983: I continued to be a twinkle in my mother's eye. Five years and 37 days later I would be born. I don't remember much about that day. Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the right knee on what date? I have no interest in what date that was. (It was January 6th 1994. But I was in kindergarten at the time so I'm sure I was more concerned with having to stay after lunch with the other losers cause my mom didn't love me enough to only have me go half days. On the other hand that was awesome cause we got to do fun stuff like make shark tooth collages with "real" sharks teeth and neon paint. I chose pink cause it was the brightest. In your face half day kids.)
So I'm probably not one of the half a dozen people in the world with a super memory. But I do still have a pretty great memory. And I fear the day that it starts to go. I seriously fear it. It keeps me awake some nights and I start to think that I should be keeping much detail about my life. My journals are all like, no one understands me, I wish I were a better writer, I need more money. That's not going to be helpful when I can't remember my own anniversary.
