also, a crush on christopher robin

my brother used to make fun of me for saying "remember when" and then continuing that phrase with a vivid, detailed memory, one that he'd usually had no recollection of. i'm finding myself with all these memories that no one else remembers, especially since re-connecting with old friends on facebook. 

i told you about my friend j.j. who moved away to tucson after 4th grade. i found him and since then we haven't spoken at all. all these years i've been carrying around all these memories while everyone else was busy getting rid of them. i thought at some point i'd have the opportunity to recount them and by doing so, to unload my mind of these weighty tales. but no one else seems to remember as much as i do.

like the mock presidential campaign in 3rd grade, where j.j. was carter and i was mondale. like the driving instructor when we were 15 who said "full tank, full belly." like when adrian tanner turned around to me during texas history class and said, "when i first saw you, i thought you were geh."

the memory knife cuts both ways. just as i glory in the memory of rosa lara who spoke no english and pointed to my I.D. bracelet in sweet reference to my name, i also wince in the memory of getting caught peeing behind the outside staircase at colonial hills. almost at the same moment i'm remembering that terrifying werewolf nightmare from age 9, i'm remembering the exact feeling of riding back from river tubing in new braunfels, dusk, in the car of my brother's friend, listening to "this much is true" on cassette. the smell of the bathtub. the large plaster conehead my brother sculpted, and his imitations of his math teacher. the way i cried and almost peed my pants on that hot day when i wore that thick, scratchy knit shirt.

am i the only one glorying and wincing? do i have an elephantine conception of my past? am i indeed a sentimental fool?