"They brought us binders full of women."
The mad scientist cross the street, his face crinkled and his eyebrows furrowed. Behind his eyes you could see gears turning and wheels moving; he was up to something. He was so deep in thought that he didn't notice the car zooming across the pedestrian walkway. From across two streets, I could hear a high-pitched screech and the sound of metal on flesh.
* * *
That man was my father. He and the driver were held in the hospital for two full weeks before anyone, even me, could see them. My father recounted his scary story to us:
"It was terrible. I saw flashes of lights-white lights, green lights, red lights-I felt as though I were in the midst of a duel in Harry Potter. Then there was nothing. Only darkness. Some time later, I awoke in the hospital, but I didn't know it was a hospital. I didn't know anything, not even my own name. The world (I didn't know it was called that either) was so foreign and strange to me. The doctors (that's what they called themselves) were baffled by my state. They also figured out that the driver had suffered from the same sort of injury.
In order to try to jog our memories, they brought us binders full of women that had similar facial features to us, so that we could try to identify our mothers. The connection we make with our mothers is very strong, so they hoped those pictures would jog our memories. Nothing worked. Eventually, the doctors gave us and let us be. Together, the driver and I learned words together, and could converse minimally."
"But wait-" the youngest interjected. "-how come you can remember everything now?"
"Ah, I was getting to that," my father replied. "After they did some thorough investigation around the site of the accident, the investigators found something peculiar - what seemed like a glob of jelly. They picked it up and rolled it around in their hands, and the glob of jelly seemed to be sucking something from their hands, they just weren't sure what. So they brought it down to the lab, and analyzed, and couldn't figure out what it was still.
They then gave us the globs of jelly (they had found a second one not far by) and asked us if they belonged to us. Of course, we couldn't remember, so we just shrugged and took them anyway. I put it on my nightstand, and fell asleep.
In the morning when I woke up, my ear felt sticky. Then I realized - I knew what an ear was! I touched it, and I realized I knew what the sensation was - stickiness! I saw that someone my head had come in contact with the glob of jelly, only now it seemed like the jelly disappeared - inside my ear. How strange, I thought."
"So what was that stuff?" The youngest asked, literally sitting on the edge of his seat.
"After much experimenting and deliberation, the doctors determined that it was - wait for it - my memory! My entire memory was contained in that little piece of jelly. They figure it must have fallen out when I was hit by the car. I was able to form new memories in the hospital, though, because the memory gloop is always in my brain, and it just keeps on growing."
"Wow!" We all said, in fascination.
***
Looking back to that day, 30 years ago, it seems so silly that the doctors thought memory was an abstract concept, and you couldn't touch your memories. It's scary to think there was no way to alter memories back then. What an unpleasant thought!
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| This is our memory |
