GREAT MEMORIES ADVICE: FROM ONE LIFE STAGE TO THE NEXT

Great memories ought to inform current decisions. After all, if you have great memories you cherish, why not add to them?

Moving along life’s stages, from one to the next, from being a kid, to teenager, to young adult, to middle age, to senior, fills up a big wagon of memories to pull along.

Did I miss a stage? Okay. From single person, to dating, to commitment, marriage; from brother/sister, uncle/aunt, mother/father, grandmother/father.

Anything else? Then let’s get started:

Growing up, many of us saw people we knew every day. Either in class, in the neighborhood, or a brother or sister’s friends, we knew them by name, by face, and by their actions.

Over time we all change, for some it’s a short time. During high school in the early 70’s, the time to change could be as fast as one summer.

Jimmy goes on summer vacation in June wearing ironed jeans, a short sleeved shirt with a button down collar, and Converse. He comes back to school in September wearing army surplus pants, a Che shirt, and sandals. He hasn’t had a haircut all summer.

Jenny left at the end of the school year looking like everyone else and comes back in September looking like Janis Joplin.

What happened? Someone left the gate open and the kids turned into hippies.

Then more and more joined in. Before too long the football team grew long hair and wore white shoes. After that there was no turning back, and those became great memories.

We Can Think For Ourselves?

Sports memories shine bright.

There we were in our Bulldog finery playing some Eugene school at Autzen and turning the ball over on downs. Our punter dropped back, but not just any punter.

Danny Jay Richards could punt, pass, and kick better than anyone on the team. He surveyed the defense arrayed against him and made his decision. Coach Johnson said kick, but Dan saw it differently on the field. He saw it the way a fast football player saw things.

“You can’t catch me.”

He took the snap and ran up the right sideline for a first down.

We lost the game, but learned a lesson: If you decide to break the rules, do it right. And he did. Hey, Dan.

We Can Make Our Own Decisions?

Recently I heard this false equivalent about dropping out of college after a bad quarter:

A man joining the Army is the same as a woman saying, “Screw it, I’ll become a stripper.”

I don’t agree completely, but there are similarities. Why should you trust me? Because I either dropped out and joined the army, or I became a stripper.

The clue is rank. I was a Pfc. If I’d become a stripper I would have promoted myself to Sergeant, although Private Pole Dancer has a nice ring.

People Who Stick Around Create Great Memories

How long do memories last? Which ones rise to the top?

You never know if you don’t stick around. Those questions were answered for me when I found myself drinking beer, no strange sight, in my local branch of Tapphoria heaven.

It would have been awkward if I was a churchman, a teacher, a policeman, but instead of those, I was a youth sports coach to hundreds of athletes over a good decade.

In Tapphoria that day one of my guys was tending bar and seven others were in the building. I looked around with great memories with each.

There was the fastest kid in a straight line, the dislocated elbow, the separated shoulder, the point guard, the one most likely to be mistaken for Joey Harrington, the strong man, the best all-round athlete. I knew them all, and their parents.

Then we all aged out when they turned into adults I was proud to know. If I had died in the tavern then I would have gone out on top.

Wouldn’t have been a great memory for them to carry if I had dropped, unless they knew I died with a heart too full of appreciation for being in their lives whenever I was.

I’ll stick around for that even if it doesn’t come with a free beer. (Can you hear me now? lol)

Growing Up With Great Memories Is Never Finished

Do you remember the best times of your life?

From all of the anticipation and talk, it was supposed to be college with all of the ‘study’ time, ‘freedom’, and no parents to explain why I needed to get rest, go to class, and be somebody.

It wasn’t college, and it wasn’t what came after freshman year: enlisting in this man’s army. For two years.

It wasn’t getting busy and back in class after the army, or the moves around the country from west coast to east coast, then further east, then all the way back west.

Even though I have a long memory, the color of the room I was born in was olive drab green, the great memories, incredible memories, started in 1986, the year I got 86’d out of the single guy living alone in a tiny apartment heaven stage of life.

In the words, I got married. Then we had kids and the memories grew brighter and warmer.

In this past few months of new Granddad-hood, I feel the power of those memories watching the new parents with their baby and the memories they are logging.

From the way things look, it’s the same work in progress I remember so fondly. Great kids pouring their hearts out to their own kids is all the evidence needed.

Leave comments, but only about nosy old people butting into others’ business, or adults living their lives through their kids, or best of all, the unexpected surge of emotions holding a baby.