Mysteries Of The Mind
Amid Facebook’s ‘Throw Back Thursday’ posts that some people enjoy doing on a regular basis, we had our own version of it at the newspaper office this week.
So with it being the observance of Halloween, we ended up having a pizza party on Thursday and of course, some candy had been brought in to the office for sharing as well.
Some 2-liter bottles of soda made their way to the lunchroom and it struck me that we had grape soda and (sorry, product placement) Twizzlers. That took me back to the days when my sister, brother and I would go to the skating rink (roller skates, not roller blades) nearly every Saturday afternoon and skate the day away. Along with skating, there were pinball games and shuffleboard, a jukebox for music and a snack bar. When I would take a break from skating for a snack, I used to love to bite each end of a Twizzler off and use it as a straw for my can of grape soda. One of those tastes from your youth. Forgotten until something brings it right back, clear as the day you first experienced it.
Halloween always makes me nostalgic anyway, back to when my mom would help all three of us kids come up with costumes, usually homemade and typically better than anything you could find in a store. Living in a small town the way we did, and in upstate New York, it was a yearly toss-up whether we would have rain, some snow flurries or the heat of an Indian summer for our trick-or-treating. But the costumes we could count on – my mom would work her magic and transform us into a superhero, cartoon character or whatever else we thought up.
We also had what I termed a ‘Way Back Wednesday’ at our weekly staff meeting on Wednesday morning this past week, reminiscing about the last World Series the New York Mets won – in 1986 – and how it seemed over in the sixth game until Billy Buckner of the Boston Red Sox let a ground ball up the first base line skip under his glove, giving the Mets new life, a second chance. We know how that one turned out; the Mets won the series in seven and it was fun to look back on that and remember some of the great moments.
Which brings me to another thought – the human brain is so amazing, with its capacity to store information. And paradoxically, so unreliable, almost as if too much is trying to crowd in. How is it that I can so quickly bring back an event from 29 – 29! – years ago and recall the feeling of that October day, watching in elation as the Mets won Game 6 … but can’t remember two days ago?
It’s one of those mysteries of life.
And sometimes, it gets me in trouble. As in a recent story, complete with photos, where I attended the Farmington United Methodist Church holiday bazaar and, a couple of times, just decided randomly to move it to Escalon. Oh, the information in the captions was correct, and several times in the story I referred to it as the Farmington event but a couple other times, I called it the Escalon bazaar. Compound that with the fact that the next weekend I was at the Riverbank United Methodist Church for their soup/pie luncheon and bazaar and this coming Saturday (Nov. 7) is the actual Escalon United Methodist Church event … well, you get the idea. Things are a little busy around here …
Some weeks are just so crazy and hectic, one time I actually had someone ask if I was cloned, because they saw me everywhere.
Not yet. But maybe that’s something the company can work on for 2016…
Marg Jackson is editor of The Escalon Times, The Oakdale Leader and The Riverbank News. She may be reached at mjackson@oakdaleleader.com or by calling 847-3021.
