The economy of language is rich. You seem to have awakened your inner child (ahh … inside joke! ROFL).
‘So serious’? I’m about as serious as a hobby. Surely you remember those things we did for fun? Make believe driving parked cars, drinking coffee, carrying briefcases, and making calls on unplugged rotary phones to find lost things and solve crimes.
You’ve been looking for memories like they were misplaced keys, only to discover that all you can’t remember has been metabolized, synthesized, and alchemized; the meaning is in you, and it is you and the life you are making. We know the value of moments when they have been tested by memory, and yet we also know that nothing really goes away until it teaches you its lesson.
What is the snapshot moment wanting to teach you?
You were seven years old, and most everything you remember from that period is a second grade classroom. What does that tell you? It was safe, warm, and somewhere that you could be you. Or could you?
The poster doesn’t lie, and you faced it every day. The memory is shame; the story is much more. And the story then is not nearly as important as the story you can tell about it now.
The poster had stickers next to each student’s name. You got a sticker for every book you read, and next to your name were the fewest stickers in the class. You loathed looking at that poster, and how it seemed to stare at you, because the poster didn’t lie and yet it was a lie because you loved reading but you weren’t. You stopped, and this is about the same time I stopped talking to you.
It’s the memory you don’t understand, the memory with the lesson, and the question you need to be asking is not why did I stop reading, but what stopped me? And more basically, what might the Enemy have been wanting to steal?
So pick up that unplugged phone and find the story! I’ll be looking for your case brief.
