Would you like a fun way to keep your brain sharp?
My husband and daughter and I like to play the “How’d we get on this subject?” game.
Here’s an example. Darrell recently imagined being inside the mind of someone who found a purse and used the credit card inside, but not the Sephora gift card. “What the f--- would I do with that?” he imagined the crook saying.
Which reminded Darrell of my grocery bagging pal from almost fifty years ago, saying the same thing when a solicitor offered him a tiny red plastic flower as he struggled to help a woman and her many children with their many bags of groceries from the Hinky Dinky store in Omaha.
Which reminded Darrell of the buffet restaurant I’d worked at just before that, where an underage dessert gal got an attack of honesty and confessed to the floor manager -- during a huddle in the walk-in freezer where they kept tubs of cherry filling and whipped cream and chocolate shavings -- that she’d lied about her age on her application. Almost everyone on the line had done the same thing, the manager soon learned, including me. Everyone got fired that night, except me. I’m not saying I worked harder than the others, but the manager apparently thought so. I kept water glasses filled and coffee pots going and checkout girls backed up as if entire civilizations depended on it. When I got a ten-cent raise (from a dollar sixty-five an hour!), well, I still get a little puffy thinking about it.
Which prompted quite the reverie about “Mom’s stories” and what an interesting life I’ve had. Do I have more stories than other people? Doubt it. I just got into the habit of saving them. What a gift. What a sweet way to live. To have fun, and to keep having fun as you remember. It trains your eye to linger on what’s worth saving. What do you most want to carry with you?
What were we talking about again? Oh, yes. The stolen credit card. Nothing justifies a break from work to swap stories like reassurance your brain can wind its way back to the first one!