Hell if I know

Memory is a strange and wondrous thing, especially if you don't think about it too much.

In my long-term internet (e-mail, technically) home, I'm on the verge of entirely hijacking someone's thread, burying sincere answers to questions about family vacation ideas with childhood stories that may be amusing (you want I should show you the laughs?) but are not helpful. But, that's how it goes on the world wide web, perhaps especially among a bunch of women who have known each other since double-you-double-you-double-you-dot was a curiosity, not a banality. Take what you need and delete the rest; that key is prominent for a reason.

The mental delete key is there for a reason, too, though I wish I knew how it worked, or who is in charge of it. Because sometimes it doesn't seem to make sense. Tell a story often enough, of course, and not only does it become true, according to your brain, it also becomes fairly permanent. Ignore something and, eventually, once your brain stops torturing you with it, it probably will go away.

Everything else becomes the Reader's Digest version of life, condensed and incomplete. Some images at least tell a sketchy, disconnected, flip -book version of a story. The time a panicky seven year old broke every rule she knew when she didn't see her mom in front of the school? That's the look of the shopping center sidewalk, the feel of the rocks in front of an empty house, the clatter of the empty Pepsi bottles in the back of a stranger's VW.

Other stories I know to be true, but I can't make sense of the pictures in my mind. I know that I once spent twelve hours in a gas station in Blytheville, Arkansas: the torture is seared into my brain forever. Or, at least, the idea that I was alternately miserable and giddy is; the specifics are gone. I know I spent most of a week one summer visiting a college in Nashville, Tennessee and rode back home with a kid from church and his mother. I remember the rain against the windshield, the debate about the speed of the wipers, and the sinking feeling when we concluded that they were, indeed, getting ominously slower. I'd say, and I believe, there was a Welcome to Blytheville sign to greet us when we stopped, but I just may be making that up. I can see old black men in hats conferring over the hood of the car, discussing how the appropriate alternator might be obtained, and later, I would bet, how my friend's mother might be silenced. I wish I could remember the car.

I have it in my mind that we never got out of that mystery vehicle, though that can't possibly be true. Shouldn't I have a horrifying gas station bathroom story? I know that, once we finally escaped Blytheville and then Arkansas, I drove that car through Sikeston, Missouri on our way home, though I was not licensed at the time. I can see the glare of headlights, and McDonald's neon, and remember the surreal feeling of it all. And then, when we finally for the love of baby Jesus made it home, watching Andy nearly collapse in the street, his legs numb from being folded into the back seat for so long.

What I cannot remember, and what seems a key piece of the story, is this:

We were in Nashville. We were headed to the Illinois side of St. Louis. Get out a map if you must. What the hell were we doing in Arkansas?