Smile

There are times when I can't remember something, and it bothers me until I remember it. For example, tonight I was trying to remember the last name of a missionary with whom I lived for a couple months. After a couple minutes of thinking, I remembered just his first name. This was a little strange because I never called him by his first name. Also, his first name doesn't really suit him. I remembered his last name maybe half an hour later: Contreras.

Other things that have bothered me when I couldn't remember them:

- The word "vigilante." I spent several hours trying to remember that word one day in June (probably) 2006.

- What book it was that I'd read recently in which the narrator describes herself as "intense." That one kept coming back to haunt me off and on for a few days, though it didn't bother me constantly the way Elder Contreras or vigilante did. I did remember in the end when I couldn't stop trying to remember for a few minutes. It was Growing Anyway Up by Florence Parry Heide. I bought this book for my mom for Christmas last year, and read it over the break during the week that we were essentially without power (electrical). Part of the reason that I couldn't remember this book for a while is that I was expecting it to be something that I'd read more recently.

(This book is part of a story about Christmas gifts. Last year, I got this book for my mom, The Bigness Contest for my younger brother Evan, Tales For the Perfect Child for my older brother Nathan, and Fables You Shouldn't Pay Any Attention to for my sister Ellen. All of these were written by Florence Parry Heide [you may know her as the author of Treehorn Times Three. The last paragraph of the Wikipedia article about her is fascinating.] And actually, I may have the books reversed with Ellen and Nathan's gifts. But my mom had a similar idea and got Tales For the Perfect Child for William and Some Things are Scary [but in Spanish: ¡Qué horror! - also by Mrs. Heide] for me. And maybe one other? Possibly for Adam? Luckily, there was no overlap in giving the same book to the same person. A second interesting, probably absolutely remarkable story about Christmas gifts has to do with Billikens. These are luckier if stolen than if given as gifts.)

- For maybe a week last month I kept seeing in my mind the face of an actress who looks maybe tired or serious, then smiles briefly in a really sympathetic/kind sort of a way, and then drops the smile. I thought this might have been from a movie I'd seen, or a television show. I don't know how many times or for how many hours I tried to remember where I'd seen this smile. And then I remembered - it's from the Multigrain Cheerios commercial that they've been running recently and which I really think is kind of a poor commercial.

- One night, in a dream, I was talking with someone and couldn't remember the word for a scientist who studies insects. The only thing that came to me in this dream was optometrist, and I knew that that wasn't right. So I didn't sleep well that night because I kept half-waking up trying to remember the word. When I did wake up in the morning, I had to pause and focus and I remembered it right away, which was a relief. (If you see the glass as half-empty, you're a pessimist. If you see it as half-full, you're an optimist. And if you see the glass through lenses that you prescribed yourself, then you're an optometrist. [This came from the David Letterman show.])