My Memory is a Peach

It's all fuzzy.

As I found myself driving around my hometown of Medford, New Jersey a few days ago, I realized that the best way to recollect the past isn’t necessarily sitting around with old friends telling older stories. Facts are lost over time; opinions and subjective memories rush to fill fact’s void. But how easy is it to revise history by not sharing such stories for years on end?

When I think back to high school, I know there are tons of stories that have a high enough comedy content to pass the stringent “bring the funny” standards of the YAB Quality Control Team (which is staffed by rotating shift, and is currently manned by Vin Diesel, Sweetums from the Muppet Show, and a monkey with a cold). Furthermore, I know many of the loyal readership comes from SHS, and can no doubt relate to things that brought the house down back in ’98. But of all the sources for laughter during my formative years, the one place that I remember laughing the hardest was during Track practice.

It is really hard to run fast when laughing. And hurdles really don’t see what’s so funny. Owwwww.

For example, I was in a conversation recently about an event that took place on our high school winter track bus one late winter Sunday night. The premise was simple – there was a guy on our team – let’s call him “Bromily” – who managed to get his girlfriend on the bus as our team manager. They sat together in Row 3. When they got a little too cuddly, (granted, it was about 24 degrees and big yellow school buses are a little light in the internal heating department) we in the back of the bus decided action needed to be taken. The following events transpired.

1 – We collectively finished off a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew.
2 – A selected representative took the empty bottle as his weapon.
3 – Said representative quietly snuck up to the front of the bus, and mid-cuddle, halted Bromily with a quick shot to the head with said bottle.
4 – The attacker ran to the back of the bus, as Bromily realizes what happened.
5 – The attacker throws the empty bottle into the seat of one of his accomplices.
6 – Seeing the bottle in the hands of the accomplice, Bromily attacks him instead of the attacker.
7 – Hilarity ensues.

Now remember what I was saying about disappearing facts? This vignette is no exception. Now it was my recollection that the role of “attacker” was played by one “Tim Fischer,” and I was his wingman in the supporting role of “accomplice.” Now, the whole hurdle squad was there – James, Lou, Rob, Weng, all of them, but in my memory it was Tim who tossed the bottle in my lap, bringing the wrath of Bromily to my front door. This story came up on Friday night. And guess what?

There’s a rival opinion out there.

As two of the aforementioned hurdlers attested to me, it was actually ME who made the Mountain Dew Dash, only to hide the weapon in Tim’s chair. That meant I dove into my own seat while Tim had to deal with the man whose cuddle we had so rudely interrupted. And as this counterview was being presented, it became clearer in my memory. It appears I had struck that and reversed it some 8 years ago. I immediately seized into a deep panic.

How many details of my life and the one of Tim Fischer had I inverted in the last 8 years? Did I attend the US Naval Academy after high school? Am I trained to work on nuclear submarines? DO I LIVE IN HAWAII?

*checks the local weather outside my cube*

Guess not.