Forget his name. I forget names a lot. You could call it a weakness, but normally it’s better left unremembered.
There’s a lot of strangers you meet who fulfill more of an archetype in a long story of chapters of your life who they themselves aren’t very important. It’s more so the brushstroke on your soul they made - some good and some bad. I guess all that matters is the lesson, though. That’s normally what I try to tell myself to disembark certain memories I wish wouldn’t haunt me as much as they do. Still, they linger, and every now and then something happens further down the path that throws you back into the several rooms of your minds; certain memories unfold into bigger lessons. Within and without context, they become all the more real. That’s what makes a story - the imprint left behind by an event, not so much the people or the events themselves. Would the original Red Dawn have mattered much if made today? Eh, maybe as some fanciful alt-history flick for nerds. It probably would’ve flopped. Much like the remake! But no, Red Dawn, when released in 1984 made double its budget.
It’s stories that are “lindy” that pass through time like the first taste of eggnog during the Christmas season. It comes back, and reminds you how important it is, how important you are, how important everything is, maybe something new you never saw is shaved off into your soul. You savor it, then save it for another time.
Sometimes someone was trying to tell you something that you didn’t quite understand. You remember it years later, and what they said comes so clear to you. Perhaps it’s a primordial anger that overtakes you when someone doesn’t know how to merge onto a highway - maybe let off a “Fucking idiot!” You think back to something an ex-girlfriend said about how unpredictable you were, even if she told you it was endearing.
Or maybe it’s a smell that reminds you of the blended scent of church and cigarettes that takes you back to your great-great aunt’s house out in the piney East Texas country.
Memories wash over in a way that can become more real than the present moment. It’s a spirit? Maybe. It certainly feels like one.
Anyway. Yeah, I forget names. Almost everyone I’ll ever talk about in my stories are going to have made up names. The only reason I’d remember them is if I have them stashed on my phone or my facebook.
The guy I’m thinking of certainly looked like a George. We’ll go with that.
Anyway.
Late at night - February, 2017
“Hey man! Sorry it took me so long, it took me forever to figure out which stop you were at!”
He waved his arms up excitedly at me as if I was a hundred yards away, even though I was maybe twenty feet away. He got out of some newer model sedan.
I could already tell, even though he gave a hint of amiability, the stench of “greasy salesman” surrounded him. Or maybe it was the scent of insanity. It’s always been hard to tell the two apart. He was way too excited to see me to say the least.
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