The (mis)adventures of Super-S

I’m taking my hourly 15 minute Facebook break, which really usually ends up being 20-30 minutes long, and will now extend for much longer because I’m going to blog about it too.

Lately the excitement of finding old friends on Facebook has worn off and been replaced by a very sad sense of nostalgia. It’s funny the details a person retains, and frightening what one manages to forget altogether.

For example, the thing I immediately remember about one of the people I reconnected with on Facebook, Kunicupcakes (that was my nickname for him in high school…don’t ask), is how in his senior year he was found on a highway in the middle of nowhere, a near empty bottle of vodka in his hand and his wrists slashed and bloody. Kuni had always had a volatile personality, but he was infinitely sweet in nature. Always with a smile on his face. Absolutely one of those people about whom you’d say, “Well I never suspected him of being suicidal.”

Obviously, thank god, he lived.

These are unfortunately the details I remember first about Kuni even though we were friends for a long time before that incident. We’d bonded in French class and over the fact that our birthdays were exactly one year and one day apart. When I think harder I remember that he was always very brotherly towards me. He always had a smile and something funny to tell me, and that he always walked with a bit of a slouch and swagger.

Kuni was also very good friends with Kiwi, whose sister I was friends with and who is apparently now a big soap star in New Zealand. Anyway, I’ve reconnected with Kiwi and his sister on FB as well, and I guess I wonder if Kiwi remembers at all the little crush we developed on each other the end of my freshman year.

We’d been travelling for a sports team together, and over the course of the 4 days of that trip we really bonded. It was obvious that we both liked each other – or so I thought. After finishing our events we’d sit or lay on the grass field (something we didn’t have at our high school!) and talk about our days. At night he would forego hanging out with the rest of the team and spend time with me and the 2 girls I was rooming with. I still recall the constant burning in my belly that I felt when I was around him, when our heads bent really close, when we’d have to squish next to each other in the taxi.

As we were heading back home from the tournament, I bought him a fez, and he wore it on the plane ride home. At the airport, we lingered as we said goodbye see you at school tomorrow…

…And then of course the next day at school the spell was broken. He was back to hanging out with his group of friends, and I with mine. We’d speak occassionally, but eventually it dwindled down to a nod in the hallway between classes or when Kuni was around. I briefly wondered what had happened, what had gone wrong. But on the other hand I was also sort of a jaded teenager, so I mostly just shrugged and got on with life.

And obviously I don’t really care so much what happened then anymore, but I do find myself wondering – does he remember that about me? Does he still have that fez? Does he remember that trip? Or did he have to think really hard to remember who I am when I requested an add on Facebook?

These contemplations are not just a matter of pride or vanity for me, but rather musings about memory. I’m fairly certain that I have a better memory than most people I know, which is why it is not hard for me to “forgive” being forgotten. But I often wonder why or how did I develop this memory? Is it genetic? Is it because I have a tendency to hoard keepsakes? Or because I’ve kept a journal of some sort since I was 13? What would I do with my mental capacity if I didn’t remember so much?

And utlimately - a matter I think most people contemplate at some point or other – why do I remember the things I do? What purpose, if any, will the things I’ve retained serve? And what, if anything, have I buried and why?

What sort of things do you remember, and do you wish you didn’t?