Why we like to remember things.

​I remember my first prize possession. My mom took a picture of me holding something in my hand when I was four. We were looking through some photo albums years later and saw this picture. She didn’t know what I was holding. I told her it was a little green and white boat. 

     I don’t know where it came from, but I loved that little boat. It was the most important thing in my life for a short while. It disappeared from my life soon after that picture was taken, but I can still see the green hull and white deck in my mind. I’ve never lost the boat in one of the sink holes that are slowly taking over parts of my long term memory as I grow older. 

     I guess these little stories about my family and my childhood are my attempts to outwit those sinkholes. The memories are still there, but it takes something to pull them out of the abyss. Something like a picture of skinny four year old holding a tiny toy boat usually works.

     Sometimes these memories tend to possess  you. In jr high we were shown filmstrips about safety in metal shop and wood shop. They were gory pictures of a hand that went through a planner or a saw, a finger that had been smashed by a hammer, or an arm that was sliced open by a piece of sheetmetal that wasn’t stored properly. 

      The pictures were always tinted green so the open wound and blood wasn’t red. I don’t know why the green tint eases the shock of seeing the gory scene, but it does. If it were in black and white, it would still be shocking, but green tint dulls it from “oh my God” to “eww.”

     I’m writing, well rewriting, a book about a piece of Native American folklore. I wrote a scene about the passenger in a car seeing the driver bathed in the green light of the dashboard and being reminded of those filmstrips. 

     The memories of mutilated hands and fingers tinted green is one memory that will never tumble into a mental sinkhole. I can’t get it out of my head, so I’m going to push it into a story and hope it takes a back seat to memories that I want in my head. 

    If the book ever sees the light of day, I can only hope the green scene will give the reader an idea of how many people think and feel the same way about many things. We’re all individuals, but share the many of the same traits with most human beings. 

    That’s the strange thing about sharing my memories. I read the comments that basically say I could be writing about their family instead of mine. Another is how my memories bring my family’s memories to the surface, and I hear my story from their point of view. 

     Sometimes it’s nice to relive a smile, a hug, or even a tear to remind you who you are and what made you “you”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Colorado Potato Beetle

​       My grandpa and grandma always had three big garden plots. One was strictly potatoes, one was tomatoes, and the last one was green beans and a mixture of whatever odds and ends grandpa decided to try.      Canning was a big event when the tomatoes and green beans were ready, but the biggest crop was potatoes. We all had jobs when it was time to harvest potatoes. The adults dug them up with potato forks and put the biggest of the potatoes into baskets that would be deposited into the root cellar/storm shelter/cave. (That’s a whole different story on it’s own.)       That left the grandkids to gather the small baby potatoes from the dirt and the vines. If the job was done right, there’d be dirt under our nails, on our hands and faces, and our knees as we crawled from hole to hole, plucking taters from the roots of the plants, sifting through the dirt, and filling the holes.          But that was the end of the growing season. What I remember most is crawling through the garden and
Read more

Disciples among us.

     ​ I bumped into a man stocking shelves in a local store in a nearby town. He apologized for having to turn his wheelchair around in front of me. I told him that I wasn’t in a hurry, and it wasn’t a big deal.         I told him that he was an inspiration. In a time when able bodied people claimed they couldn’t find a job, a man in a wheelchair was working harder than most of today’s young people would want to.         He told me he didn’t want to be an inspiration because of his handicap. He wanted to be an inspiration for his love of God. He was humble because God says that we shouldn’t be prideful. He did what he did because God gave him the strength to carry on each day. His body wasn’t a reflection of him. The Holy Spirit and what filled his head and heart was what made him who he was. He    shared the gospel every chance he got.        He said that he often talked to people that came in the store about Jesus Christ freeing us from sin by dying on the cross. He said it was diff
Read more

Why am I here?

​        I woke up this morning with a question. “Why am I here right now?”     I’ll ask myself that question dozens of times throughout my day. Sometimes, the good Lord answers that question. Sometimes, He smiles and tells me he has given me enough clues to figure it out on my own.          He puts people in my path that change my path, or I change theirs. Twice in my life, he put a pastor of a church in my path that changed my point of view. Their honesty touched my soul. I’m a better man having walked the path with them.          Twice he’s put a pastor in my path that changed my view of religion and people in general.     They spoke in the name of God, but they acted in their own self interest. You can do anything in the name of God and consider yourself forgiven. It may not be the case, but my job is not to judge but to categorize.          What does that mean?    It means that I need to put people in their place within my space. I’m not in charge of the world, I do have some cont
Read more