I find it unnerving when I am talking to someone, around my age, (give or take a decade), that starts reminiscing about their “good ol�?days�?  Now don’t get me wrong, nostalgia can be fun; remembering your childhood can be fun�?because most of us remember the good things and seem to have amnesia about the bad.  Revisiting one’s past is a good thing... as long as it is one’s past that is being remembered and not a figment of one’s imagination or collage of other memories.

 Hold on a second, I forgot what I was going to say�?so much for those “rememberies�?huh? Give me just a minute here.  (Mumble, mumble, whisper, crank whir.)  Okay�?I remember what started this line of thought now.  (Wow, with a train of thought like that I’ll need fabricated memories.)

A while ago  I was talking with my friend Jack, when out of nowhere, he said, “I remember when I took my first step.  Yeah, my mom was wearing a soft blue summer print dress and she was so proud, that I just stood up and started walking right across the floor.�?/DIV>

  
 â€œNow hold on just a minute there, Jack!  You’re trying to tell me, that you remember something that happened to you over 50 years ago, at an age when you couldn’t even remember not to poop in your pants!�?/FONT>

 Okay, that was a mean thing to say.  In fact though, he is not the first person to say something like that to me, he’s just the first one I responded to.  How in the name of Methuselah can someone remember an incident in their life, that happened when they’re still trying to remember what that little thing below their navel is?  I know that basically, the brain is sort of empty at that age, but can you have real memories at that age?  I mean real, honest to God, memories, vivid enough to recall the color of mommy’s dress? 

 I can only remember one thing that happened, when I was 4 or 5 and that’s only because something scared the living bejeebers out of me. (Things like that seem to stick in the corners of your brain, no matter how you wish they wouldn’t).  Other than that, I’ve just got scattered memories of my childhood and I’m not even sure I have them in the right order. 

 After thinking about it though, I started to worry about Jack.  The only other time I can remember someone actually remembering things that happened a half-century ago was my Grandmother.  She was in her eighties and she would ramble on about things that occurred in 1953, but couldn’t tell you what she had for lunch.  What was worse is she would tell me the same thing 14 times�?in an hour.  Poor ol�?Grandma, told me once I was her favorite grandson�?when in actuality, she didn’t like me. 

 Other than that, there was this movie I saw many years ago with Ted Danson and Jack Lemmon called “Dad�?  A very under-rated, funny/sad movie about a young guy that had to care for his dad for a bit, while his mom was in the hospital.  One thing you could miss in this flick was Dad’s memories�?of things that never happened. 

 Now, this is getting spooky.  Is this what I have to look forward to?  Remembering mom being so proud the first time I used the outhouse on my own? (Without falling in.)  Shoot, I don’t remember those sorts of things.  And I probably couldn’t tell you what I did last week either.  I guess I just don’t see the reason for those types of “rememberies�?  Maybe I just have a bad memory. 

 Sigh.

 What was I talking about?  Oh yeah�?BR>  I find it unnerving when I am talking to someone�?/FONT>