We all have our bread-and-butter memories. The ones you
trade in for grocery credits and don’t miss when they’re gone. You know, riding
the bus, or studying in the library, or watching a vid. It’s always been a
mystery to me why anyone would want those boring old memories anyway. But to
each his own, I guess.
I got a really good deal on most of my grade school memories
when I was traveling in Asia. I’d met up with four other guys at a hidden beach
resort in Thailand, and one of them heard about a dealer from the bartender.
Five of us walked into town from the beach resort. He gave me so much credit I
bought dinner for everyone. Banked the rest and used the memory of choosing my
first dog from the shelter to pay the resort bill. So many unwanted dogs in
Thailand – it struck me as particularly curious that they’d choose that one.
Back in sunny C-A, I found a nice apartment about an hour
north of San Diego. The light was awesome, and I setup a studio and started
painting and teaching like I had before Asia. It was in my catalog, anyway. I
must have traded in the rest of those memories sometime during my travels.
Funny, cause I didn’t usually trade in art memories.
I began to wish I had kept better track of all that. But I
had always thought, what’s the point of worrying about memories you don’t have
any more? It kind of bugged me, though, that I’d traded in something I didn’t
think I should have. So I made an appointment with a credit planner to review
my catalog and a few of what I thought might be my more valuable memories.
I was expecting a bank, but her office looked more like a
spa, or a psychiatrist’s office. She even had a reclining couch, though we sat
on opposite sides of her desk to get started. While she accessed my catalog and
paged through it, making a few notes, I looked around her office. On the
credenza behind her was a headset that looked like an old-style phone, with a
thin band curved to rest over the head. Was that a memory scanner? The Thai
dealer’s miner had just been a wire glove, and the creditors usually just used
a finger sleeve like a heart monitor.
While she was going through my catalog, she kept sneaking
glances at me. I wondered if I had something between my teeth, and I resisted
the impulse to feel with my thumbnail. Looking at my fingernails, I had not
done the best job cleaning paint from under them. I studied the colors and
tried to remember the piece I was working on. Was it a landscape or a model? I
couldn’t remember…
Dogs in house:
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Houdini, Brindle
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May word count:
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7,309
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