Memory is a funny thing. Why exactly, I can’t recall. But it seems to come and go with for no apparent reason, with strange, minute details lodged firmly in place, while things that should seem obvious just float through, never to be heard from again. The first time for me happened during a trip to the basement to retrieve… well, that’s just the point. I had a nice, big pantry down there with lots of things in cans. You can really spend a lot of time looking at cans you’ve accumulated, kind of like trophies. “There’s that can of peaches. Picked it up from the store that one day after work when I was real tired. It sure is pretty.”
The reason I can remember staring at the can of peaches is that I spent quite a bit of time admiring them, along with the endless cans of beans (See? Minute details) while I was trying to remember what it was exactly that I had come down those thirteen stairs to retrieve. It was pretty shocking to realize I no longer had the ability to pull specific information out when it was needed. I was sure it would come, if I stood there gazing down the shelf of peaches and beans, and now that I think about it, Hamburger Helper. Nope. It seemed like a complete waste of time to make a trip down those 13, white-carpeted stairs in the dead of winter and not have anything to show for it, so I had to find something to take with me. I certainly didn’t feel like eating peaches.
I can’t remember exactly what I brought back from the mental abyss – the basement – that day. Unfortunately, the thing that sticks is the fact that I couldn’t remember. Several years later, when we moved, I took most everything from the shelf and donated it to charity. Except for the Hamburger Helper. At this point it needed to be classified more in the “museum artifact” category.
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