The Telemarketer is sometimes full of shit.

The customer is sometimes full of shit.

Winner Takes it All

Remember when...

It often amazes me how good my mum's memory is. It's freakishly good. For example, she can remember the exact day she left for London something like 30 years ago. Like it's another child's birthday or something. She even remembers my friends' birthdays, and even then, it was only because I said 'I'm going to so and so's party, his/her birthday's today.' I'm notoriously bad at remembering birthdays, and I apologise, and will continue to apologise for this for the rest of my life. SORRY! I often wonder why her superpower wasn't passed on to me. In fact, I think the opposite effect happened. My mum's memory is so good, that to make up for having 'remembering skills' in excess, whoever decides these things up there decided to shortchange me. I mean I'm pretty thankful that I do have some semblance of short term and long term memory, but I do often wonder where all those things that I used to know in my head went.

Case in point #1: (something I'm pretty sure won't shock many) I'm really horrendously bad at maths. This includes forgetting an embarassing amount of times tables that my dad tried to knock into me so hard when I was at that crucial age when learning maths was compulsory. (I know, when?)

Case in point #2: I've forgotten stuff I learnt in 1st year uni. I can say I've read and been examined on texts like Hero & Leander, Heart of Darkness, and The Red Badge of Courage, and yet, I remember shockingly little from them. I remember liking Hero and Leander too. I guess liking something isn't a prerequisite for remembering its contents. 

Case in point #3: I watched this French film last semester called Human Resources. Comfortingly, I do remember what it's about in pretty good detail, BUT, not very comfortingly, I can't remember the director's name. I mean, I wrote part of a 3000 word, 60% essay on this. HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE. The only explanation is that my memory is abnormally bad. My track record for my lousy memory never ceases to disappoint and amaze. After referring to the wonder that is google, my memory has been refreshed. That guy's name is Laurent Cantet.

I'm pretty sure I could move on to Case in point #very large number, but I think I've embarassed myself enough for one night.

I bid you all adieu, until my next moment of self deprecation.

Dear Friend,

I was reading a book the other day, where one of the protagonists has some sort of obsession with handwriting. Of course, this obsession with handwriting was a convenient avenue for plot development, but besides that, I found it a rather intriguing thought. I admit I'm one of those people who find sentimental value in things, oftentimes giving others the impression that I never throw anything away. Wrong! I throw away that which doesn't mean anything to me. But, like this sap I was reading about a few days ago, I keep a box of handwritten articles because to me, they are more than just words. They are the thoughts, the feelings, the memories of those people who wrote them, and I find it a privilege that they chose to share them with me.

In a world where technology reigns, where it is easier and faster to use a machine to express yourself (as, ironically, I am doing now) the act of writing something down is expression in one of its purest forms. Your handwriting is thus your own, irreproducible stamp, something no one else can recreate with their own hand, just as you cannot recreate theirs. Perhaps there is something comforting in the thought that in our society, where it is so easy to look and to act like everyone else, something as simple as your own handwriting can provide some sort of  a marker of identity, of being the only one of its kind in the world. Handwriting adds authenticity, conviction to words. What are left of words without the life in them? They cease to be meaningful, but remain only as empty vessels. Think about every letter, every postcard, every birthday card, every hasty note ever written to you. What would they be if they were all in Times New Roman? How much character would they have left? A lot less than if they were in someone's chicken scratches, or neat print, or haphazard scrawl.

So even if I don't talk to that person anymore, or if I happen to see them everyday, I still keep those little bits of paper, those hints of personality. But always, they stay as reminders of my connection to other people in this world.