Hubby: Have you ever ridden a mechanical bull honey?
Me: Maybe? At Gilly’s? But it’s a very squishy memory and I don’t know if I’m the one on the bull or if I’m watching someone else.
Many of my memories are squishy, which makes it hard to write a memoir. There will definitely have to be a disclaimer about everything being true to the best of my recollection and my recollection could include memories from movies, television, other people’s stories and outright falsehoods.
Other squishy memories from the ‘80’s:
I may have proposed to Charlie Sexton after his show in a dingy 6th Street dive bar in mid-80’s Austin? My friend Cathleen is buddies with Charlie now, and I’ve thought about asking her to verify this with him, but chances are, I was his thirteenth proposal that week, so the memory would be squishy for him too, if it exists at all.
I may have been arrested with a group of friends for breaking into an abandoned mansion on Fry Street in Denton, Texas. In our defense, it was raining and we needed a quiet, dry place to smoke. Were we arrested or were we just detained there and given a stern talking to? Somebody got handcuffed for sure, but I don’t think it was me? I’m pretty sure my first time in cuffs was at the Denver International Airport.
Hubby and I may have zigzagged through every aisle of the Kerrville HEB at 2:00 a.m., laughing hysterically and launching eggs at each other — like, dozens and dozens of eggs — until we were both so slimy we couldn’t stand and our security escort basically slid us out of the building. Why? Dunno. It’s squishy. I hope this one is a false memory because it seems really disrespectful to the legendary Texas institution that is HEB. Maybe it actually happened down the street at Super S? That’s acceptable. The good thing about squishy memories is that they are malleable.
I may have convinced some of my fellow counselors at the Texas Lions Camp to borrow some tables out of the dining hall in the wee hours of the morning, carefully place (throw) said tables in the swimming pool, climb atop the invisible tables so that it looked like we were standing on the water, and pose for what we hoped would be our group Christmas card. It didn’t work, of course. It was too dark and we were all drenched because there’s no good way to climb onto a table that has been carefully placed (thrown) in the middle of a swimming pool without getting wet, so it was decided that we should re-enact it in the daytime once the pool had been drained for the summer. But whose idea was it for all of us to wear tuxedos? And where did we even GET all those tuxedos?? Seriously, that took a level of coordination and logistical planning that I could not have pulled off. Or could I? Nah, it was probably Karen. Damn, I wish this one wasn’t squishy. I bet it was a great story.
Leaving a comment will really help me become one of the popular kids ;)
I also have “squishy” memories when I have memories at all. Turns out those of us with aphantasia often have very bad memories for their own histories … something to do with the visual being tightly bound to memory creation. Thanks for sharing your own experience of the flexibility of memory and how difficult memoir writing can be on account of that.