Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Sept. 27, 2010
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When every day's a new day, sort of Last Monday morning Marilyn and I were in the kitchen. She was busy feeding the dog and I was preoccupied with my Cheerios. There’d been no conversation at all until something just popped out of my mouth. No, it wasn’t a Cheerio, it was a name. “VERNON!” I said. Maggie, our dachshund, ran to the door and barked. She wasn’t sure what a Vernon was, but if there was one, or a whole flock of Vernons in the yard, she was against it. Marilyn, on the other hand, knew exactly what a Vernon was. “Vernon and Denise Twilly,” she said. “That’s it, all right. Why couldn’t we think of that last night?” The reason we couldn’t think of it the night before was ... well, because we are both over sixty now. Oh sure, there are people without the sense God gave a goose who’ll tell you that sixty is the new forty, but they are only fooling themselves. At best, sixty is just the old fifty-nine with a few thousand extra miles on it. Sixty is when your body and mind start giving you those ominous hints about what eighty will be like. The night before, Marilyn and I had been lying in bed, discussing places we’d lived and people we’d known. I mentioned an old neighbor named Willie something or other who had only one nostril, which reminded Marilyn of a family named Twilly who went to our church when we lived in Decatur. The Twillys had all their nostrils, and we saw them every Sunday for over two years. We were perfectly familiar with their names. There was Denise, little Gerald, Andrea, and ... oh, what was the husband’s name? We both agreed that the name had at least one syllable, and we went through the usual routine of “let’s see now, nah, nah and Denise. Denise and nah nah.” No luck. It bothered us that we couldn’t remember, and we soon became immersed in the search for the phantom name. We tried the old alphabet trick, where you go through a series of names beginning with A, then B, etc., and when we got to the Ns, we thought we were onto something. Marilyn was positive there was an N in the name somewhere, but neither Norman, Nelson, Nigel, Nick, Neal, nor Nolan worked. We gave up on the alphabet gambit, and tried letting our minds go blank for a moment. I fell asleep. So Monday morning at the breakfast table I wasn’t even thinking about the Twilleys. No, I was ruminating about college mascots’ names in general, and specifically about why those geniuses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had to go and name their mascot Tim the Beaver. That was when VERNON popped into my head. It had been there all along, but my brain had decided to hide it and spring it on me when I wasn’t expecting it. That kind of thing happens a lot, lately. My mind will offer me a tidbit of information, or raise a perfectly logical question, and then take it away, only to give it back later, when I no longer need it. Like, for example, when I’m driving and spy a piece of rope alongside the road, which naturally causes me to wonder whether an Alabama diamondback rattlesnake could possibly migrate south, mate with a Florida Burmese python, and produce a nest of thirty-foot, poisonous reptiles capable of decimating the entire Epcot Center. I decide to explore inter-species snake mating on the Internet at my first opportunity. But when I get home and remember that there was some matter of global significance that I needed to research on the web, it’s gone. I stare at the computer for awhile, shake my head and walk away. There are undoubtedly thousands of very important things hidden deep in the crevices of my brain. They are not gone, they’re in there, waiting to leap out at me, one at a time, when I’ve long since forgotten why they were there in the first place. Sometimes my mind will impress me with historically significant names like former U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold or L.A. Rams running back Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsch. But more often than not, it’ll make me realize I’m an idiot with no control over what information I retain. Just the other day, for example, the name Crabby Appleton came to me. It belonged to a character in the old Tom Terrific cartoon series featured on the Captain Kangaroo show. It had remained in my cerebrum, dormant, since the mid-1950s, only to resurface while I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving. (I do not remember what Crabby Appleton looked like, but I do remember that he was “rotten to the core.”) Sometimes the brain drain is almost immediate. Many’s the time I’ve hopped out of the recliner and marched in a determined, businesslike manner, into the kitchen, only to discover when I get there that I’ve forgotten what I had in mind. “What did I come in here for?” I’ll ask Marilyn, knowing that her guess would be every bit as good as mine. “More Coke?” she offers. “No.” “Your glasses?” [Checking] “No, I’m wearing them.” Sometimes retracing my steps helps, and sometimes I’ll simply see something that jogs my memory. Perhaps you haven’t experienced any of this brain fart activity yet. Don’t worry, you will. It has its advantages. Marilyn and I have learned the value of being able to laugh at the same joke we’ve already heard but forgotten, and the special joy of watching a movie three-quarters of the way through, before saying: “Doesn’t some of this look familiar to you?” “Yes, I believe it does. OH YEAH, WE’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE! It turns out that the cop is the one who–” “Wait, don’t say another word! We can be surprised all over again.” “Good idea.” |