365 Day Journal Challenge

Day 9 When I was younger I could remember anything...

Day 9- Journal Challenge

" When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. - MarkTwain"


Oh, to be six or seven again and know everything.  What we all lack as grownups isn’t the knowledge, it’s the hubris to think we know what we are talking about and the fear of “faking it till we [remember] it”.  My 7 yo learns half a song on the piano and he “knows all about how to play the piano” or he has a guitar and knows the words so he “knows how to play the guitar”.  I admire the confidence but I try to remind him that, even if he does know everything, let the teacher think she is teaching him something and he might want to listen just in case she knows everything too, and it’s a different everything than he knows.  I wonder sometimes if I’m bursting his bubble or giving him a lesson of reality since we grown-ups know that we don’t know everything, even when we think we do. 

Okay, this is about remembering, not knowing.  But still, this son of mine has a memory that won’t quit.  He remembers lyrics pretty well for a 7 yo (although if he mixes up a word, good luck trying to tell him what he remembers isn’t correct). 
However, he was looking for his glasses one day and I was trying to get him to remember where he put them.  He drew a complete blank there.  Then he said in his wise little voice, “its okay mommy, its just like when you lose your keys, they’ll turn up somewhere”.  Touché.  When I was seven, I spent the last ten minutes of every morning before catching the bus at the crack of dawn looking for my mothers keys, glasses, purse, you name it.  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how she could lose that stuff in our tiny two bedroom apartment.  It was just the two of us, no little brothers or sisters disturbing our things, surely no maid cleaning up after us.  Just us two.  I can’t tell you how long we hunted for her glasses with them sitting on her head, hidden in her curly hair.  Now, for me, I was like my son.  Remembered everything, whether it happened or not.  After a few times of it coming to mind, it was cement.  Couldn’t tell me anything either, I guess.  I would see some fact on the television or remember it from a book with a title I could not remember and it would pop out in conversation.  Never could prove it b/c I always remembered the gist of it and never the source (not much different here). 

My son will pull me to a piece of paper or catch me on the computer and say, “I need you to write/type a song for me.”  I’m amazed at his way with words until two lines later, it sound either like a song from Simon and Garfunkel or a Jonas Brothers lyric.  Not completely, mind you, but they are awfully close.  I write it anyway.  Like me, the song is banging around in his head but he can’t remember the source.  I get that.  I don’t want to stifle his creativity-its not like he’s turning this stuff in for a grade or to get published.  I will tape the mouth of my inner lawyer shut for a while (no thanks to my mother partly enrolling me in her law classes in late elementary school) and let him create. 

I have an acquaintance who is a gifted singer and songwriter, a friend of a  friend who we used to see when he sang at little clubs in Birmingham (check out Roger Day on the internet-terrific kids songs too).  I found a kids cd (didn’t know he did kids music at the time) and I eventually bought all his cds (my old ones were copies of personally made cassette tapes from the early 90’s).  Anyway, to make a long story a little shorter, on one of his adult cd’s, he talked of a song he wrote while on tour (without his guitar at arms reach) and had it all written out, notes and all.  When he got home and tried it out on the guitar, it bore an amazing resemblance to “Feelin’Groovy” by Simon and Garfunkel.  The song was called Helicopter Harry and was on the children’s cd I also had (one of my kids’ favorites about a kid who didn’t like washing his hair).  He ended up singing “Feelin’ Groovy right after the kids song (on the adult cd) and gave credit where it was due.  Anyway, if my kid mixes up songs from Simon and Garfunkel and writes new ones with their tunes, well, I should be so lucky.  Those are some darned good musicians and songwriters.  It makes me want to tape my mouth shut when he creates things because my mind picks out similar patterns, remembers all sorts of extraneous information (though I can’t remember where my car keys are either) and I find myself saying what I’ve discovered.  Then my poor son, who thought he had just written an original song (a verse anyway) is like “Oh, I guess that’s where I got it” and I feel like the worst parent ever. 

Maybe we should just let our kids mooch off the brilliant minds, tell tall tales of “ginormous” (my sons favorite expression) fish, and let them keep thinking they know everything about something and long as they still remain open to letting grownups think they know it all if they are the teacher, at least.  And as long as we draw the line with publishing or turning their creations in to a teacher as their own, what’s the harm of letting them keep their hubris just a little longer?  Perhaps the little stretches of the truth will make them a great fiction writer, stretching the fish…oh, I mean the truth… will also make them a good fisherman LOL., and having the guts to write lyrics without fear of the little editor inside just might make them great musicians.  And doing all three just might make them a lot like Mark Twain, and would that be so awful, really?

SWPoet




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