Slipstream Dreams, Inc.
Patient: Noah Gregory, D.O.B. August 23, 1965
Medical Practitioner: Dr. Donovan Otto
Memory Extraction: August 23, 2055 at 13:30 Hours
Lawful Termination of Life: August 23, 2040 at 13:31 Hours
I often think about childhood memories. I believe those of us with the most difficult childhoods remember the most. Every petty screaming match between parents, each slap to our head or face delivered by them, the vivid descriptions of the walking, talking, disappointments we were to them become magnified with each passing day, with each passing hour.
On the other hand, my children remember nothing, good or bad, about their childhoods. My son doesn’t remember me riding him about town on the handlebars of a bicycle I restored, and my daughter draws a blank when I mention the Chinese restaurant I used to take her to when she was a child, nor how the waitresses there taught her phrases in Cantonese, or when they all applauded when she wished them Happy New Year in her newly acquired language.
And, somehow, the evenings we spent playing “Name That Tune,” and our weekly talent show, dubbed “Poet Theater,” have faded into the ether. And, I sense, as time moves on, my grandchildren are forgetting the times we spent together. Backyard camping, Bigfoot searches at state parks, filling bird feeders in anticipation of exotic visitors, the dizzy euphoria created by amusement park roller coasters, all of these memories dissolving into a microscopic dust, lost to the wind, scattered about the universe.
Perhaps a frail ego has led me to this theory, and I admit, I present it to you without a shred of empirical evidence, only self pity and the insatiable desire to be the father and grandfather I always longed for, and I beg you now to remember me for my life and not the performative manner of my death.
Very sad story. Almost led me to believe at some point the narrator was going to do awful things to get remembered.
Maybe sometimes it's a good things stories end when they do.