Looking Out My Back Window #175

Originally posted on Facebook HERE

Hey there everyone. Heading into winter – we have rain in WI today. Better than snow, so we have that going for us. Lately I’ve been noticing my memories more than I maybe have in the past. I think we all have those memories that just pop into our heads for no apparent reason – some snippet of our past that will just appear to remind us of that moment in time. Sometimes it might be triggered by what we’re doing, but often it’s just the appearance of a bygone time that is just suddenly there. About a week or two ago I decided to start making a list when a weird memory just popped in to revisit at a later time and write about – just try to remember everything I can about what was going on during that particular memory. And once I started doing that I started to get more and more memories flooding in. Today I was going to start taking that list and looking at it, writing down what I can remember. Some of them are painful, some aren’t. Some are just weird snippets that I know have popped into my head often over the years, but why? Here’s a couple examples – one memory is of my dad and I – I think it was maybe in junior high school, for whatever reason I see this taking place at my junior high (Webster Stanley). But – whatever, wherever it was I guess we were talking to a music teacher about me taking up the violin. I vaguely remember being upset with my dad because I overheard him saying he was fretting about me taking up the violin. One the way home he asked me what was wrong, and when I told him he explained that he was actually discussing the lack of frets on a violin with the teacher – he wasn’t “fretting” at all. Weird memory, but one that has popped up periodically in my life ever since. Another memory that popped up, and this one I haven’t thought about in years, was when I tried to run away from home when I was fourteen. Man, seems like a lifetime ago. The guy who went with me – I can’t even remember his name. We weren’t close friends or anything, we just got this idea and did it one day. We were going to hitchhike to California I think. No money. I think (this is all very hazy) we took highway 21 west out of Oshkosh. We called it “going to” rather than “running away”, because there was really nothing we were running away from. We just wanted to “go to” California. We got as far as the Wautoma/Wild Rose area before a really nice guy picked us up, fed us, and while we were eating called the cops to come get us and return us home. My dad picked me up, maybe he came and got both of us, I don’t really remember. That’s a crazy memory. Makes me a bit uneasy reliving and writing about it. Glad it didn’t go any further than that. Later, another friend of mine ran away and did make it to California where he lived for years before letting his parents know where he was and eventually returning home. He did a lot of drugs and came back pretty burnt out – a totally different person than he was when he left, and he stayed that way the rest of his life. There but for the grace of God was I. I’m not going to let random memories escape without looking into them deeper anymore. It’s easy to put a note in your phone, and even use an app to write about them individually when you have the time. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’ll help me understand myself. Maybe it’ll be interesting, maybe it won’t. But why do we have random pop up memories? I have no idea, but today begins my new experiment. And five years from now I could be sitting somewhere and a thought will pop into my head… “remember when I was going to remember all my oddball memories and write them down? Whatever happened with that idea?”…