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| Oh, you know, just rememberin' and stuffs |
I do, a lot. I’m a pretty sentimental person, and my memory can be overactive, hanging onto the smallest bits and pieces, refusing to let go. It’s not like I have some super memory and vividly remember everything that’s ever happened to me, but I’ve always thought I remember more than most people. From time to time, I say to a friend, “Oh, remember that one time when…” only to be met with a puzzled expression.
Well, I took my sentimental self back to my college last weekend. It had been awhile since I’d been back, and it was homecoming weekend, so a lot of people were in town. Ah, the memories. You know, the memories only I remember and the memories everyone else remembers.
I caught up with an old friend who was also in town for the weekend, and we were reminiscing about how I didn’t like her when we first met. You see, she was friends with my (at the time) recent ex boyfriend, and rumors were flying around like crazy about all kinds of things. Considering it’s years later and we were drinking and gossiping together, we’ve obviously worked things out since then, and she’s just finishing up grad school at the same school my ex boyfriend transferred to, where he’s working in a coffee shop.
In discussing the rough beginning to our friendship, we came to the topic of this boyfriend, and she brought up a nickname I’d pretty much forgotten about. You see, when he and I started dating, my ex’s roommates started calling me “Sweetheart.” I had no name, just Sweetheart, as in, “Hey, when’s Sweetheart coming over? What are you and Sweetheart doing tonight?” They called me this so exclusively, in fact, that I sometimes wondered if they even knew my name.
When we broke up, my endearing nickname took a turn for the worse, and they began referring to me as “Skeetheart.” Charming, huh? Though Skeetheart stuck pretty solidly in my memory, I had nearly forgotten I’d ever had my more affectionate nickname. Until now.
“You know,” my friend said, “I see him all the time at the coffee shop where he works. And you know how coffee lids are made by a company called Sweetheart and it says it on the lid? With the little heart next to it? Well, every time I’m there and he puts the lid on my coffee, he says ‘Ugh, Sweetheart,’ and rolls his eyes.”
I couldn’t help but feel a bit victorious. He may have broken my heart, but now he’s the one who has to think of an old nickname I’d nearly forgotten while he does his job. I guess I’m not the only one who remembers things I shouldn’t!
But that wasn’t the end of my weekend of bizarre nostalgia. Just a few hours (and a lot of drinks) later, I checked my phone to see I had a text from a number I didn’t know. “Hey, how are you?” I stared at it for a few minutes before realizing I recognized the area code: the finder of “the one.”
Now here was someone I really hadn’t thought about in months. I mean, he was pretty inconsequential and was out of my life just as soon as he entered it. If I hung onto every memory of everyone I liked for a hot minute, I’d be inundated, and not in a good way.
I still wanted to be sure it was him, so I asked who it was, and he said “I read your blog post about me from months ago.” Talk about a buzzkill. Literally. I drove us home at the end of the night.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“I just wanted to see how you’re doing.” Not acceptable.
“Why do you care?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Also not acceptable. I was not a happy camper. I excused myself and stepped outside so I could concentrate.
Refusing to take “I don’t know” for an answer, I pushed harder. I mean really, who just randomly decides to talk to some girl they passed up for “the one” after months, just because? Plus, it’s completely unfair to me for him to just stir that pot willy nilly. I further expressed my confusion.
“My lady has been mean lately.” Your lady? Really? I’m not your sister, your therapist or your friend. Tell someone who cares.
“Why is she being mean? I thought she was ‘the one.’” I couldn’t resist.
“She is. Sorry to bother you.”
I returned to my friends, dumbfounded, annoyed, angry, everything. And only now, a few days later, does it hit me. Not only did this blast from the past think of me randomly, but he read my blog. I deleted him from my Gchat friends months ago, and we were never friends on Facebook. And there have been numerous blog posts since then, so he had to read back quite a ways.
Now, I’m not saying he spent hours stalking me or anything, but this had to take at least a tiny bit of effort. I mean, the blog post didn’t just appear in front of him while he walked down the street, and a text to me didn’t just magically write itself in his phone, though that’d be kind of cool if it did.
All I mean is these little incidents, these little reminders and memories, they don’t make us creepers. Because as much as we deny it, we all remember these tiny little things, these nicknames, these insignificant people. I don’t know why a keen memory is something to keep secret – we all have them.
You know that Stars song, “Your Ex Lover is Dead?” The guy sings about meeting someone again with whom he once had some sort of romantic connection, and he says “All of that time you thought I was sad, I was trying to remember your name.” Well, he’s a liar.
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