Memories

I have no clue what genre to put this under, its really just an inner monologue.

I have most random memories, things I don't think I'd remember.

Looking in my red homework folder. I'm in fourth grade, standing in daycare in the cafeteria next to the big map. The dot in Sophie is a heart.

Why do I remember that? It's not significant, all I know is I was trying to train my hand writing so every time I wrote my name, the dot would always be a heart.

Memories are peculiar in that way, I suppose. What makes a memory stand out, like that one does. Some memories are just happenings, like I remember crying when my second grade teacher moved at the end of the year, but no image comes to mind, unlike the brief one above, where it's like I'm nine again, standing there with the tattered, unorganized mess of a folder in my hands.

I've always had this theory about de ja vu, and I stick to it. While you're in the process of being born, your soul or whatever is in heaven or wherever, watching a 'video'. See, in my mind, a few minutes down here is 100 years or so up there, and so, your soul sits, and watches your life, which is completely planned out. Like a very long, probably boring, novel. And so then you're sent down into your body, but you don't remember the video, because you know, now you're a baby and babies can't remember things. Especially from when they didn't exist. But I think de ja vu is little clips of the video coming back to you, remembering little scenes, even though they're trivial.

But what makes a memory? What made that moment stand so prominently in my mind? Or when one of my best friends, Alicia, told me I didn't have the 'eye for fashion' with something about a tiger, in kindergarten. Why I remember so clearly in head count in morning daycare kindergarten, thinking 'I'm going to lose this tooth today' while wiggling it with my tongue. That one may have an explanation, a memory Alicia, Chelsea and I share that happened later that day, when I actually did lose the tooth by bumping into Chelsea's shoulder, that may be the reason I remember the thought I had had that morning.

I keep getting off track.

What makes a memory? Will I remember this moment? My fingers tapping on the keys of my laptop, my dad making his lunch in the kitchen, pouring the cats food into her metal bowl.

“Bye honey, love you!”

“Bye Daddy, love you too.”

“Don't forget your mothers plates, or did you get them already?”

“I got one but I couldn't carry the other.”

“Okay, bye, call me if you need anything.”

“'Kay.”

And the door closes. I tuck my hair behind my ear, but I recently went scissor happy and cut my bangs shorter, so they fall back. Will I remember this? I suppose now I will, now that it is forever immortalized in writing.

But the moment itself, will it stay with me? Become one of those images that you see at the same time as the real world?

Or will it trickle away in the stream of moments gone by?

Author's Note

reviews please!
Tell me what you think makes a memory, you know, if you want.

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

Memories are a odd thing. Hard to control what we remember and what stayed with us. I like the description of the day. Small thing can effect the mind. I did like the questions at the end of the story. Thank you for the excellent poem.
Coyote

[Lydia]

I often ask myself the same question. Sometimes random insignificant memories will pop into my mind. I can remember silly little things from elementary school that hold absolutley no importance, but I have a hard time remembering what things looked like around me at very significant moments in my life. I guess the brain just works in very mysterious ways.

[Kimberly "Melody" Carne..]

I truly enjoyed how you wrote this. It keeps moving forward then into flash backs, yet comes back to your topic. I think this is the best way to think…I call it thinking inside yourself, were you go so deep that in turn you have thought outside yourself. I am a firm believer in re-incarnation. Not how others do, I believe in heaven and hell too, yeah to much to explain, anywho;) I love your mind…keep thinking like this and you’ll be amazed at what your soul will show you!

[♪The Girl Next Do..]

I have lots of random memories, and they don't really make sense, but at the same time, they kind of fit together, you know?
Excellent story, I can relate to this a lot. Keep writing! :)

[Falling Leaf.]

I have so many random memories! As if I dunked my hand in a sack full of them, pulled some out without looking, and then pasted them in a scrapbook in no particular order. I hardly even know what happened yesterday. I was with SOMEONE, but who? Yet when I was nine I gave my first grade teacher a Hershey kiss and tried not cry because I missed her so terribly. Weird, how these things work!

Anyway. A great monologue that we can all relate to. One thing I notice is when you were talking about the cat food, you need an apostrophe in "cats".
Other than that, well done!

[Amanda]

I don't know what makes a memory. I have lots of random memories, but I think they're all significant somehow. You'll remember something insignificant because it will lead to SOMETHING significant. Who knows? Maybe something major will happen and you'll remember just how moments or hours before your dad fed the cats

[luv2dream]

Wow, it was very complicated. But true . . . you had me captivated the way you wrote it. It was almost like your readers and you had been friends for years and you just talked openly about the question.