An Awesome A Day: Our Memories Are Awesome.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Our Memories Are Awesome.

Our minds are incredible. Saturday night I finally met Libby, a friend of some friends, who has the exact same immense, ridiculous knowledge/love/obsession with gymnastics from the 90's on as I do, and obviously we instantly clicked. Kellyn, Marie and Libby and I toted up to Frisco for the WOGA Classic, a gymnastics meet where we were definitely the oldest fans there who weren't holding hands into the arena with their daughters. Whatever. I LOVE THIS SPORT. Libby and I spent a good amount of time recalling gymnasts from years past, names and routines and scandals and leotards I hadn't thought about in years, but instantly came into my brain. It was awesome. Marie, Libby and I returned to my house to watch some, ya know, current gymnastics meets, like the 1992 Olympic Trials on my VCR. Needing to adjust the tracking (remember that craze?) yet loving every minute of it, the three of us were cracking ourselves up as we identified a Tinactin commercial and its tagline: (come on, I know you know it, too) "Tough Actin' Tinactin!" without hesitation.

We then laughed at some of the old gym books I had. Libby asked if I remembered a certain book, MY FAVORITE OF ALL TIME, A Very Young Gymnast, which I pulled from my bookshelf without skipping a beat. We poured over the book and its photos that we hadn't thought of in years. It was 1987 again.

We rounded out the flashback weekend with talks (and readings) of Grover Sleeps Over (my mom recalled his striped pajamas with ease when I asked her about it today)

and a current-day challenge to solve the amazing mysteries of Encyclopedia Brown.

Sunday I was doing a million things and had basically just lost my brain for about an hour or two in the afternoon. Couldn't find my keys (in the chair cushion), couldn't find my shoes, wallet, mind. I was trying to get a few things together to take to a friend in Grapevine, which for you non-Dallasites is about a half an hour from my house. A gorgeous 70+ degrees yesterday, I finally got my act together and thought, "This could be a good drive" and randomly grabbed a VERY old cd case before heading out. Cut to sunroof open, random mix cd chosen, and yours truly belting out Dixie Chicks from the top of my lungs. Next song came on, Matchbox 20, then another, then it didn't even matter what was next. I was back in high school.

I'm not near the first person to write a blog post about a song, a drive, and a transformation, but it's still incredible to me how totally transforming a 3+ minute song can be. I changed CDs and popped in this little gem and literally shouted out the lyrics to Granny and had absolutely not a care in the world. Breeze through the hair, loud music, overjoyed, young, free. DMB. Hello great old times.

I'm so thankful for our brains and their ridiculous ways to simply bring such memories right back, and with amazing clarity, like a cd you choose from the jukebox. Move to front and center and blast it.