The Curse of the Vivid Memory

I've always been kind of...sensitive. Even as a kid, things got to me that most kids wouldn't ever notice or care about. I would hear about something that happened to someone and it would break my heart, even though I had no idea who the person it happened to even was. Sometimes, this sensitivity has served me, but most of the time, all it does is make me an even more nervous person than I already am. Years after the fact, I'll still remember some incident that someone I know went through, and it'll still have some kind of impact on my psyche. Meanwhile, the person it actually happened to will have long forgotten it.

I have memories from my childhood, too, that still make me cringe with embarrassment. Something I said or did that I determined to be embarrassingly inappropriate in some way, that I remember as vividly as if they'd happened yesterday, can stop me cold in the middle of a thought, and I'll think, "God, I'm an idiot." And after a beat, "Well, I was an idiot when I was 11, anyway."

I always think that these memories of embarrassments or hurts or whatever will come in handy in my writing. That one day, I'll finally figure out the story I can ride to international bestsellerdom, and that these anecdotes, or the more entertaining of them, will find their way into the story. Will that happen? Who knows? Maybe one day I really WILL write about the time I broke up with a boyfriend in the middle of Franklin Street in downtown Boston, yelling at him for being a cheating asshole, as promised. Maybe one day I really WILL write about the time my Dad caught me having Barbie and Ken get busy and I made up a completely PREPOSTEROUS excuse as to why they were naked...and then guiltily recanted two hours later, which was really just more awkward for poor Dad. I guess in the meantime, I can at least entertain my sister and best friend with the ridiculous stories that no one remembers but me...well, and them, because I've told each of them those stories 542 times.