Memories: How to Make Them

A few days ago, I reported to all 14 of my FB friends that, while in our local Aco Hardware (No, that's not a typo.  It's a cheap knockoff of Ace Hardware) in search of a drain snake (the metal kind, not the OMG THERE'S A SNAKE IN MY TOILET kind),

I was overcome by the piped-in atmospheric music, and had to STOP! Because, apparently, it was Hammertime.

Imagine this pose, but with a 41-year-old woman in a winter coat and a red handbag. In the plumbing aisle of a hardware store.

One of the best responses was from Rachel, a lady of impeccable maturity, who said, "HA! Kate, you make the world your amusement park!"

Yes. Yes I do.

And WHY, you might inquire?
Because if you do nothing noteworthy, you will FORGET things. 

Think back to 6th grade.  Remember the day before Christmas break?  No?  Well, if you had chosen that day to stand on your chair in Social Studies and start singing "The 12 Days of Post-Soviet Russian Christmas," you'd remember that day.  Precisely.  [Example only.  Did not happen.]

How about your birthday, 16 years ago.  No?  If you had pulled over while driving, and got out to pick some cotton in the field RIGHT THERE (while wearing cherry-red ballet flats, as I recall), and sang -- out loud -- "Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seeen.  Nobody Knows, but Jeeeesuuuuuuuussss," you'd be able to remember it down to the temperature, the shoes, and which side of the road you'd been on.  [Example that REALLY DID HAPPEN.  In Texas. It was the right side of the road, heading south.  It was balmy -- probably mid-70s in late March.]

Cotton is rather harder to pick than one might assume.

A Tuesday night, two years ago, mid-December.  Midnight.  SNOW DAY had just been declared for my kids.  I got them up, had them toss coats and snowpants and boots over their footie pajamas.  We went out and had a midnight snowball fight, then came in for hot chocolate.  They still remember that!

So, sometimes memories are thrust upon you (my daughter being born about 1.5 hours after arriving at the hospital), and sometimes?  You have got to make them yourself.