When I was about 10 years old, we had a thing at school. There was a playback show and together with three friends we decided to do a song from Kiss. I can’t for the heck remember which song it was, but that doesn’t matter. There was a part in it that needed a saxophone player, and I was designated to do that. So my mother bought me a little plastic saxophone from a toy shop and a practiced a lot. When the day came that we had to perform, I lost my saxophone. I was totally in tears because now we couldn’t perform the way we had planned, little perfectionist as I was already then. So I rang my mum at home if she could please get me another from the shop. It rained cats and dogs that day, and my mother couldn’t drive a car, so she took a bicycle, and cycled for 30 minutes to the shop and 30 minutes back again in the pouring rain.
I in the mean time was being readied with make up and what not and avidly awaiting my mum. When she finally showed up I opened the box that should have contained the saxophone, but instead it had a little trumpet in it. This did not do! I really had to have a saxophone in order to perform well! So I whined and cried, and finally my mother went back into the rain to exchange the trumpet she bought.
However, after 30 minutes, we had to go up. I tried to stall it some more to wait for my mother, but after 10 minutes there was no waiting anymore. So we went up, and I didn’t have a saxophone or a trumpet. Luckily, about a minute later, my mum came in, totally drenched but with the saxophone I needed. Just in time.
This episode happened 16 years ago, but I still remember it as if it happened yesterday, and I know I will until the day I die. When I think of it I still feel shame that I sent my mother into the pissing rain for something so trite as a stupid playback show. I apologised one or two years ago about this, but my mother can’t remember it at all anymore, but for some reason, this left a huge mark in my memory.
When I was three, my dad backed over me with his car. And our relationship went downhill from there.
In Middle School, I almost got expelled for wondering out loud about the origins of the word “nigger”, and commenting on how that’s such a weird word.
In my Sophomore year in High School, I met a short, blonde girl. My subsequent (and almost four-year) reaction has been quite startling, if not amusing. Yet I learned from it.
In my Senior year in High School… my very first play. Damn, was it fucking great.
My memory’s not a very happy one i’m afraid. If i think of a good one i’ll post it later.
Last year my cat had been going downhill health-wise for a while but one day she suddenly got really bad and it was obvious she was going to die very soon. I had to make the decision to take her to the vets and spent the whole day with her crying out every time i went more than two feet away. She would meow, and i would meow back and she would meow again in reply. I have no idea what i was saying to her but i hope it soothing. The time came to go to the cats and i will never, ever forget the moment the light in her eyes went out. It makes me cry just to think about it.
Me and two friends went to Mardi Gras and had a blast. Of course over the course of several days and nights there were many, many women encountered. One of my friends got a BJ in the bathroom of The Cafe D.
But there is one woman I will remember forever. It was sometime between exhaustion and dawn and we were heading for the car. Most people were. I looked down the street to about my 11 o'clock position and there is a co-ed group of friends and lagging behind her group was this young woman.
She was looking right at me. She was in her early 2o’s and had short dark hair and was wearing a light color print dress. She never looked away from me.
My two friends were on either side of me but they didn’t notice the connection I was making. They were heading for the car and I was being carried by their movements. We turned a corner and that was it.
I’ll never see her again except in my dreams. And I know the memory of her will warm my tired old bones.
A few months ago, when I slept with Rashad. And afterwards, when I thought I might be pregnant, and I would call him in tears because I just knew that having a baby would ruin my life. And he kept telling me everything would be okay, because he loved me, and he wasn’t going to let me deal with it alone, even though I knew he wasn’t ready for it either, and he had the opportunity to back away. And when the lady at the clinic told me I wasn’t pregnant? I called him from my cell phone in the parking lot, and we were both just so overjoyed at the idea of not having a baby.
Another moment I’ll never forget is the first time Scott kissed me. Months of built up passion and frustration all wrapped into one little kiss. It wasn’t the best kiss I’ve ever had, but it’s the most significant to me. I may not remember all the other guys in my life, or when/where I kissed them, but I can always think about Scotty and the rainstorm and smile.
One time I visited a facility where food, medical devices, etc. are irradiated.
The radioactive material (Cobalt-60) is stored under 25 feet of water inside a concrete vault. The items are placed in the vault, and the radioactive material is raised out of the water for a specific amount of time. While it is underwater, it is perfectly safe to enter the vault in normal clothing.
The most impressive thing I have seen too date was those radioactive rods glowing bright blue under all that water. I knew that radiocative material glows, of course, but it is very different to know something like that and to actually see it. It was disturbing in some way I can’t describe.
A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember.
You take me.
One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off.
A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn’t see me at all, but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.
I was sure I would remember forever the house number of the house I was born in and lived for my first 12 years. But when I went back there last year, it turns out I didn’t have a clue. All of my guesses were wrong and I had to find it by landmarks. Even when I saw it it looked wrong to me but the old album pictures confirmed my error. Now I have to wonder what else of my childhood is remembered wrong.
Dunno if this is much use… and I’m not evangelising. But I went through such a catalogue of pain in my earlier years (no more than many but quite enough for me) that I ended up driven to actually getting around to praying, which I knew was the answer. It can be explained by finally doing what I thought I should… or by the reality of Christ… or by a bunch of pheromones released when I gave up the burdens, whatever way I chose. But I will never, never forget the deep unshakeable calm that came on me. The Knowing that everything would have its ending, and that it was - somehow - under control. It was way down in back of me, a very PHYSICAL sensation. I was about 14 and it was quite genuine. I’ve experienced it a few times since, once just as strongly. And later that same year, on a day when many around me were smelling roses in the air (a manifestation of the Spirit from a conference months before, on the other side of the country… or a hallucination), I’d retreated into a library to catalogue some tapes and suddenly I could smell it too. These things are so much more real than what I see around me that I can barely describe them. The very air of heaven must be harder than diamond on our own level.
It was my junior year in high school. I was walking home down the street with a couple of buddies when the sound of car tires squealed out from behind us. We turned around to see a black car cross lanes and come barrelling toward us at an ungodly speed. Desperately trying to save our asses, all three of us went crashing through a neighbour’s hedge and into the trees. The car hopped the curb where we had been only a second before and continued with its left side up on the sidewalk for about 20 feet before correcting its path and tearing off.
In shock, we exchanged “Hey! We just cheated death!!” glances and grinned at each other like idiots. That’s when the screaming started. I swear I felt that scream shiver down my spine. Across the street in the direction the car came from was John, a classmate, lying on the sidewalk with his legs splayed out behind him screaming “My Back…My Back…” repeatedly. We ran back to join the small crowd that was already gathering at the scene while a neighbour dialled 911.
Lots of cops later, the story we were able to piece together was that the driver had been in a fight with John 10 minutes earlier and had driven up the curb in order to block his path and finish the fight. Instead, he ran John over breaking his back and both legs. Panicing, he pulled back onto the road, almost hitting me and my friends in his getaway. Thankfully, John was able to walk again, although with a pronounced limp.
I don’t remember who the driver was or what kind of car he was driving (although I picture Christine) and I don’t even remember John’s last name, but I will never forget that scream.
The day I agreed to trade shifts with another officer. Received a call about an accident. Arriving on scene, I discovered a State Road dump truck loaded with mud and sludge from cleaning out ditchlines. The truck lost its brakes coming down a hill, travelled about 300 yards down a narrow residential street and didn’t hit anything. It went down another hill, ran off the road, hit railroad tracks, and flipped end over end…right through a batch of kids who just got off the school bus. A mother and her son were killed, another girl had severe injuries, but lived, several minor injuries and untold emotional damage to the rest of the kids. The driver had minor physical injuries, major psychological injuries. It turned out that a mechanical defect caused the accident, and the driver did all he could do to avoid it.
One Tuesday last fall, two of my friends attempted suicide. They didn’t know each other, just me. One succeeded. The other one didn’t. You can imagine me receiving that kind of news, within hours of each other. Not about to forget that moment very soon.
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