MMMMemories

I was talking with a good friend yesterday about my memory. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, I can't stop paying attention to details that don't mean anything. I'll recognize someone from college... who I never actually met or talked to in college but just remember from seeing often. Or a particular food may send me spiraling back in time through layers and layers of munch memories.

A few stream-of-consciousness examples of how my brain works (and sometimes distracts me into long, unproductive bouts of remembering "is this really that important to remember?" stuff).

I hear Blink 182's "Adam's Song" on the radio. First I think about a friend of mine from high school who was really into Blink. Oooh high school. Loved that white Ford Explorer that I had to share with my brother. Loved that my ghetto CD player who legitimately say, "BAD" when I put in a disc that it couldnt' read. Wow. I had that song on my first generation mp3 player I had in college that only held 30 songs. Adam's Song was one of those 30 songs. In the playlist, it was proceeded by "Freak of the Week" by Marvelous 3. Oh, and that little black and yellow mp3 player with the black elastic armband used to travel with me to the Ramsey [athletic] center at UGA, where the elliptical machines were engulfed in sorority girls. Would you believe that upon arrival, you had to sign up for a slot nearly an hour away? And then when girls would get on late because the person before them got on late, they would try and stay on beyond their :00, :15, :30 and :45 time slots. Nice try, girlfriend. Just because you let the person before you use the machine until 7:48, that doesn't mean you can be casually getting of of there at 8:03. Nice try. Also, why did those girls wear clothes that were two sizes too small? Was it the "freshman 15?" Is that why MY clothes were all too small? Man, my clothes did get way too small at that time. And there was that time that I was stretching and realized after 20 minutes that I didn't have the mp3 part of my mp3 player (only the earphones). I walked over to the information desk with my little black and yellow earphones and asked if they had seen a lone black and yellow mp3 player. The punk behind the counter asked, "How can I REALLY know this mp3 player belongs to you? I'm sure a lot of people would like to claim this thing." I respond with, "Umm... do my matching set of earbuds that are missing its player give any kind of indication that the player belongs to me?" And I think to myself, "and who would want this 30 song-playing POS mp3 player anyway?" It was more than 20 minutes before I convinced this kid's manager to give me back my cheap player with the same skimpy song list on it. He was short and angry at the world, I'm pretty sure.

So, I'm browsing facebook. I click on my friend R---n's page. I see a familiar face with her in one of her tagged photos. I click on that girl's profile. Hmmm, I met this friend of the friend once in person and thought she looked familiar. Processing. Processing. Oh, she hung out with the DTD guys I befriended over my freshman and sophomore years. And she was a little younger than I was. Yeah, that's right. Wait, she's married to M---y H----r? What? No way! That's crazy! I totally sat next to that guy in biology class freshman year. We played tic tac toe and the class was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He played tennis and went to Chattahoochee High School with my dorm mate and friend Michelle. Gah, it seems like a million people came from Alpharetta's Chattahoochee High School! Seriously. There are some people I ought to catch up with who went to CHS. Freshman year biology started at 11am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I preferred to get up as late as usual, going straight from the dorm to the classroom. September 11 was a Tuesday. I was supposed to have freshman biology. I woke up late and had slept into the first few minutes of freshman biology — and straight through hysterical people talking loudly and moving about down my Russell Hall dorm hallway. I wish I could blame my poor scores in freshman year biology on things other than tic tac toe, national disasters and too long class periods. I am rather sure I just wasn't cut out for biology. I mean, who thinks that way... and retains it? 

And so go many of my trains of thought throughout the day.