TheBanyanTree: remembering obscure and important things

[Julie Anna Teague]

I described an advertisement from the 60's or 70's to a friend.  A child
safety ad which shows a child peeling a piece of lead-based paint from a
window sill and sticking it in his mouth.  It was a very fuzzy memory and
I wasn't altogether sure I didn't just make it up.  My friend wrote back
that, yes, she remembered the ad.  

Oh, good.  Sometimes I wonder, you know, if things I remember were real or
just some memory that got twisted up with some other memory.  Was it an ad
or do I remember some kid peeling off a piece of paint and eating it? 
Maybe both.  Like, I always tell my kids about how I walked at least a
mile to school as young as first grade, when I was only five years old.
But then I wonder, was it a mile?  Seemed like a mile.  I remember a long,
busy stretch of road and feeling very small. I remember thinking that
school was far enough away to have small adventures on the way, far enough
to contain many many mulberry trees with their scooshable purple berries
when school was almost out for the summer.  I distinctly remember the
feeling of scooshing them but not the name of the street where they grew. 
I don't remember being afraid to walk it or if other kids walked with me,
or whether my mother worried or gave me any precautionary information,
although surely all of those things happened.

And then there are those memories which remain crystal clear despite their
insignificance.  I remember that a boy named Tim Houseman kissed me on the
hand in first grade.  Why, Lord, why do I remember his name and have
forgotten, for instance, the last name of a guy I went out with twice in
college and on whom I had a very intense crush?  Why do I remember racial
incidents on the playground in 1968, but nothing about the death of MLK
Jr.?  My parents were very political and mostly left-wing so I know we
watched it all on television.  I do remember seeing men step out onto the
moon.  My dad took a picture of it, on the television.  Would I have
remembered it without the picture? 

And then there are other memories which, I swear, I can't remember if they
happened to me, to my brother, to one of my sons, or maybe to a friend who
has shared childhood stories.  It's just plain scary sometimes.  I always
envied those people who had crystal clear memories of every aspect of
their childhood, every one of their highschool friends, all of their
college exploits, etc.  It makes great story fodder.  

We moved a lot, so maybe I ended up more confused than some.  I did not
have the seamless existance that other people I know had--the ones who
could tell you which corner their bed was in in their old room, the ones
whose old room actually still exists with that very same bed in the same
house with the same parents.  I have to first recall which room, which
house, which city, which parent.  Maybe I simply met too many people who
are being jostled around in a long line and I have no control over who
gets bumped and looses their place.  Maybe I woke up too many times in a
new place with equally long streets but was never the same equally small
girl.  I know that my stories are as colored with change and movement as
they are full of foggy and forgotten moments. 

Julie