Remember Me?

I can't remember my neighbor's name. I've been trying to think of it since two Stop signs ago and it won't come to me. Which is fine. What I'm really wondering  is if I can apply this latent ability to others.

What I'm really wondering is if I've done it before. Which would be cool and horrifying. Whole people gone. Or are they making up some ethereal soup of memories. Ethereal fog of memories.

As soon as I left you, you're a memory. This real thing with a sheen and density and tuft of reality. You're an idea I have of you that is hard to separate from what you think is you. Id, Ego, Superman.

I hold you in my head and I can make you laugh and smile because I'm most comfortable with that. I can read things in your voice. Whispers are hard, but I think everyone sounds the same in whispers.

Don't worry, you're safe with me, as I carry you around. You weigh virtually nothing and don't slow me down at all. I'm happy to have you, in fact. I think it's because rather than thinking of myself, I'd rather think of me as how I think you think of me.

I don't see this as a problem. But sometimes I do wonder if I know myself very well, and I wonder how much myself is guided by your perceived perceptions of me.

It's like car seats. Car seats don't really do much in the way of keeping a child of so-and-so height and weight from harm in the event of an accident. It's just that if you don't have one, people go bananas about it. So, people buy them just so they won't be perceived as careless dolts. They don't buy them out of any real fear or conviction that they're actually doing any good. It's the same with voting, recycling, Live Strong bracelets, bicycle helmets, grammar, reading-in-public and farting.

I really like to think my recycling is doing actual good, but it's not as if I've ever followed my refuse from start to finish. That milk jug is in the river right now for all I know.

Nonetheless, you're with me. And likely that means I'm with you. How long has it been? Am I getting blurry? Do I have a beard? Am I still a child? Am I wearing glasses?

Well, lift me from the fog now and then, and I'll do the same for you.

You're now going to fight my third-grade math teacher to the death, and it's going to be narrated by my uncle, Floyd.