Toe in the Water

The Vagaries of Memory

The Vagaries of Memory

Strange how forgotten memories will pop up occasionally for no apparent reason. I was searching the old brain the other day, looking for something to write about, when a memory of college days came out of nowhere. It was positively hilarious at the time, or so we thought, so it might be vaguely funny to recount it now.

You’re wondering who “we” refers to in the previous sentence. To be honest, I can’t remember exactly how many we were but would guess at three or four. And we were mildly inebriated students with nothing to do on a Friday night but look for mischief. Someone suggested visiting one of our professors, a young, one-of-the-boys type who had no objection to receiving visitors.

We staggered to his apartment and knocked. He seemed happy enough to see us and invited us in. Once in the living room, we found that he already had a visitor. A rather straight-looking gentleman sat with ramrod precision in one of the chairs, regarding us with distaste. I guess we were not the most savoury of characters in appearance, most being rather hairy and casually dressed in jeans and ragged T-shirts.

We settled into the chairs and waited rather awkwardly for matters to commence. And it was the straight fellow who began by addressing a speech to our professor. In our rather addled state, it made little sense to us and the speech had not proceeded for long when one of us interrupted the guy with a question.

He paused and answered. Then turned back to the professor and continued. Only he did not go on from where he had been halted. He began again from the beginning. We listened in confusion.

Then someone else asked a question and the man patiently ceased his spiel to answer. After which, he began again from the beginning. Once this scene had been repeated a few more times, the truth dawned on us. He was an encyclopaedia salesman and had learned his sales pitch by heart. The problem was that he couldn’t remember it if interrupted and had to start again each time.

Well, you can imagine how tempting this was to us, given our age, state of mind, and need for entertainment. We were quite merciless in our invention of questions to force the poor fellow to start again and again. In the end, our professor took pity on him and brought his torture to an end by turning down the offer of encyclopaedias. The crestfallen man departed and we left soon thereafter, giggling and creating a noisy distraction in the streets on the way back to the college.

And now, in my dotage, the memory returns to have me snickering at the keyboard instead of coming up with some serious subject to pontificate upon. Such is life.


Word count: 469