Give Me A Little Credit

I hate my memory. It tortures me far better than anyone else ever could, constantly replaying situations and conversations, often word for word, that I would rather forget. I can usually remember what I was wearing and what I ate during these situations.

Many of my friends have come to rely on my memory and will call when they need me to remember something they have forgotten. Sometimes it is a shared experience, but usually it’s just something that was going on in their life that I observed or they told me about that I filed away.

When M. was visiting me the other week, we talked about her ex-boyfriend of 20 years. We said a lot of bad things, but she also told me about the time he loaned her a thousand dollars to buy a van before she even learned how to drive.

I was stunned. It was me that loaned her the money. I could have gotten proof, gone back and found it in one of the journals I wrote in 1988, but M. knew my memory well enough to believe me.

We had an interesting talk about why she thought it was her ex who loaned her the money. Did she want to believe that in the spring of their romance, he had done a cool thing? We decided it must have been because he later told her that he did it. Did he himself believe it by then? Maybe. He’s always been good at believing his own lies.