…outtakes

My life is one big movie that I’m supposed to be directing, or at least taking in a lead role in the acting. For the first half of it, I was only a bit player, but it worked out because I only remember bits, and most of that is blurred. But, it’s not really a bad thing to have a lackadaisical memory; that way I can blame others for my past mistakes with aplomb!

I certainly took no conscious hand in any decisions. For the most part, I think I sat back and ate popcorn, as life was indelibly impressed on the reel-to-reel film that was my brain. The memory bites that I recall from childhood are a situation comedy, full of pratfalls, miscues and pathetic sympathies for the outcast underdog—me.

I've read that emotions have the power to put memories at the forefront. When my emotions were cruelly swayed or ecstatically weighted, I remember![1] It’s really too bad that embarrassment doesn’t have the same effect. I forget when I make myself a fool, and it may be better that way.

In retrospect, my teenage years were horror flicks, particularly for my parents. I just hung out, oblivious to the fact that I could intervene in my own picture—that I could avoid the nasty ending by doing what everyone yells at the screen, “Just don’t go there!”

Now and again, in times of crisis, my film hits auto-rewind, then play, and my response is conditioned from those “film-ative” years. It is interlaced with weird yet wonderful moments that flick on and off entirely unbidden. Mom has since encouraged me to get therapy to erase and overwrite some of that old stuff, but think I prefer my youthful misperceptions.

To: Sis.ter@win.out
I’m not ready to give up while I’m still perfecting this technotherapy thing. I’m writing my memories—besides, when we all talk about it, I get nine different versions anyway. Love T.

[1] Births are vivid! Like it was yesterday!