Instalment Fifty Two

I used to know a girl who had perfect memory. I don’t mean a good, perfect, never forgot a thing. Now I’m not often wrong, if something important happens I try to flick the record button in my head. She had no button, she was always on record. She said it was a curse. She would tell people that something happened one way and they remembered it another. This makes people angry. It’s confronting, suddenly you feel you aren’t experienced the world right.

She could play her memories, projected as film onto the canvas of their real-life locations. Replaying a good memory, she’d experience the happiness anew, so clear that remembering became its own fond memory. When I think about times we spent together, all I have left are hazy mental snap shots. We had a picnic in that park, I think, but what we wore, ate or said are gone. Looking at my blurred snaps I think they were happy ones but is that true or what I have decided looking back? She would know if we were happy or if we weren’t. Maybe we weren’t. Maybe that’s why I no longer know her. Maybe that is a curse.