Numbered Memories (1)
The phonograph clicked lightly over the bumps in the record as the familiar crackling static filled the rest of the space. Finally, a male voice blasted through the room where the phonograph was situated.
“All right,” he stammered, laughing, “just try to tell me something in your life that corresponds to a certain number, descending, starting with your age.”
“So I tell you why the number twenty is significant in my life and then…” a woman’s voice answered, also bright from laughter.
“You go on to nineteen and so on.”
“Ok, I think I get this. So, twenty…Well, twenty dollars was how much I got when I babysat for our neighbors two doors down. God, those kids were brats,” she laughed. “But we certainly had some memories. I think I learned all about patience watching those boys.”
“Anyway, nineteen. That was the number on the double decker bus a girl friend and I took to get back to our hotel when we were lost in London. It ended up being the wrong bus, but we got on it because it was dark and we were convinced some creep was following us. Anyway, the bus driver was really nice and after his rounds when we were the last two left, he took us back to the hotel. We tipped him, but he didn’t have to go out of his way. He was a very nice old man who had two daughters of his own, so he understood our predicament, as he put it. That was a really fun trip, I should tell you about it sometime.
“Eighteen, huh? Let’s see…I was eighteen when I got my first car—”
“Try not to mention ages. That would be too easy.”
“All right, if you insist on making it harder. …I had eighteen dolls in my collection that my grandmother had been giving me at the holidays. She died before I got any more, but I loved every one that I got.
“Seventeen is actually an easy one. My first boyfriend was number seventeen on the football team. I don’t know why I even dated him, we had nothing in common except that he was friends with my brother. Heh—I remember sitting in the stadium freezing cold and screaming my head off listening for any word about player seventeen. At least he was a good football player, he was always pretty popular, but modest. I guess I liked that he never took full credit for a good game, even though he made most of the offensive plays. He was always so quiet.
“Enough rambling though, I’m on sixteen. Besides being an awful time in my life—no ages, I know—sixteen was the number of brownies my favorite brownie recipe made. Fun fact.
“Fifteen…hmm…ten and five…Fifteen was…a book I vaguely remember reading. My brother kept it on his bookshelf high up, so I couldn’t reach it, and he told me not to touch it. So naturally, when he wasn’t home, I got the step stool and pulled down the book. I don’t remember how old I was when I read it—very young—and it was not a little kid’s book. No pictures, except for a few, and a lot of naughty words and ideas. I was actually scared of it, to tell you the truth. I never told anyone I read it, except for my mom a few years later. She just smiled at that point and said I should try reading it again when I was older. I haven’t gotten around to it, but I remember vividly the feeling of horror and strange fascination.
“God it was strange. Well, fourteen: the number of pages my first story had. At the time, I thought it was a novel, but now—huh, it’s just a piddly little number.
“Thirteen was…um…hmm…well, besides being my lucky number not very important. Although that was the number of days—I think—that I stayed away from home when I ran away. Yes, I actually ran away from home. Most kids talk about it or if they do it, they don’t get very far. I actually left my house and took the camping equipment and just walked. I camped out in the forest preserve and kept moving around all the time so no one could find me. I last almost two weeks before one of the police officers stumbled upon my camp in the wee hours of the morning. My parents were livid and I remember getting my brother to admit that he did cry over my absence. But even though I told myself that was a triumph, it just made me feel worse about it.
“Twelve was the number of worms we convinced Billy Patrick to eat in a dare. Hah; that’s a really disgusting memory.
“Eleven was the number of steps leading down to my basement. And I know because I had to carry the laundry up and down without being able to see. So, I’d count the steps so that I wouldn’t trip. It was a useful number to have memorized.
“Ten…well, ten o’clock was about the time when I found out my dad had died. My mother called me out of school for the rest of the day and took me home and told me. I was stunned at first, but once I realized he was never coming home, I cried for several days. He was always at the hospital, so the fact that I could never see him again took a long time to reach me. A lot of bad stuff happened that year. That was the year I attempted suicide, too. My poor mother.”
She took a deep breath. “But enough about that. Nine…three by three…oh, ‘I’ is the ninth letter in the alphabet, and also the calligraphic letter that my brother has tattooed on his forearm. There are a lot of reasons why he liked the letter ‘I.’ We both got depressed often and he liked to remind himself that he was in control of his life, not fate. He always liked feeling like there was a sense of power and he felt better about things knowing he was controlling them, or at least, his reaction to them. It was also the roman numeral for one, symbolizing uniqueness, which to him, reminded him to savor the little things in life because they might be a once-in-a-lifetime moment. In tarot cards, one was the magician, symbolizing creativity and self-reliance. One also symbolized the beginning of something. Anyway, I went with him when he got it, and he was in a particularly negative mood, but he explained all of this to me and it made so much sense. He wanted it on the inside of his forearm because he wanted to see it in the off chance he ever thought of slitting his wrists and being reminded of all that power and self possibility. My brother always was my beacon of strength and intelligence.”
Another deep breath.“Wow, I’m really getting deep. Ok…Eight. Eight was the number of leather -bound notebooks that I owned. I love the smell of leather and every year I would save enough money to get one at a craft fair. I had eight of them, unadulterated and clean before I thought I had better ways of spending my money on things I didn’t need. I think I used one as a sketchbook, but the others are all empty.
“There’s a certain magic about an empty notebook. It’s so neat and orderly and just full of possibility. It’s hard to explain, but I’d have more of them if they didn’t take up so much space."
Author’s Note on post 331: I’m glad I got this up before midnight because it is technically still July. Sorry that I haven’t gotten more posted, but I will put up the second part tomorrow. I thought it best only to give you a 1.5 page chunk at a time. Not much else to say about it.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 10:24 pm and is filed under End of Childhood, Fiction Prose, Realistic Fiction, Short Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.