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December 12, 2006
collateral damage
I was flipping through the channels the other night and stumbled upon Titanic. "Hey, there's a mistake. They show smoke coming out of the fourth smokestack," I observed to myself. "But it was fake. It was there just because people thought it looked more impressive. Wait. Hmm. How do I know this? I've never read anything about the Titanic. Ah. Yes. Maddie went through a Titanic phase in the early 90s."
She didn't actually read aloud in bed, but she might as well have. What she read in bed, I learned a few seconds later.
Thanks to her and other girlfriends, I'm likewise an expert on, god help me, all things Elton John, the Dallas Cowboys and Stephen King. I feel like I witnessed the Civil War, and you'd think I've been to Polynesia and Germany. I know more about rose disease and Mount Everest and canine anal glands than I care to, and for someone who's never even inhaled, I sure seem to know a lot about smoking pot. For that matter, I know a good deal more about meth culture than I'd like, but try as we might to forget, some things cannot be unheard.
For someone who's accused almost daily of being a poor listener, I do seem to devote a lot of valuable neural real estate to useless crap spewed by girlfriends.
If the memory-zapping technology from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" really existed, I wouldn't go after memories of Maddie, but I would surely hunt down and kill tidbits like which brand of maxi-pad she uses and the fact that Dick James was the record producer who paired Bernie Taupin and Reginald Dwight. Decades of mental gunk like that is doubtlessly why I can't remember where I parked my car today.
Now I'm not saying that Maddie didn't help with the shopping, but shortly after I moved to Washington, she sheepishly called me to ask what brand and style of maxi-pad she used. That's pampered.
posted by john at 6:39 AM • permalink