7-Up

I pride myself on not letting things get to me emotionally.  Letting things roll off my shoulders has always came easily.  With that being said, if something does manage to worm through my defenses, it is very difficult to remove that thing from the front of my mind and concentrate on something unrelated.  My job, or rather the attitudes of the people that I work with, keep me up some nights (like last night) exhaling heavily out my nostrils (in the bad way).  Here is me trying to step over this unnecessary life poop and focus on something else.

Memory and our senses hold a very powerful bond with each other.  Whenever you take in any sort of stimulus, whether it be through your skin, nose, or whatever, your mind will autonomously scroll through its databanks and fire off memories of instances where similar stimuli were involved.  I've recently caught whiffs of perfume that instantly bring to mind a girlfriend from the fifth grade that has not been thought about in over a decade and a half.  There she stands in my mind clear as day, down to the yellow jelly bracelet and glittered flower patch on the knee of her jeans.  I didn't plan on this memory, nor did I necessarily want it, it just happens thanks to the power of shared association.   Sometimes I like to think that all the electrical impulses and synapses firing in our heads are not unlike a herd of wild stallions made from an organic-electricity sweeping across the planes of grey matter that make of the folds of our brain.  They run wild and go where they want, tending to return to pastures where they had once grazed before.  We can try and herd them one way or another, but at the end of the day they do what they want.

So... whenever I take a drink of 7-Up I always think back to my childhood.  I'm sitting in the nurse's office of Radley Elementary School.  In an effort to make myself look as pale as possible I am breathing as slowly and shallow as possible, almost suffocating myself.  My mom comes in and signs some papers.  She is dressed for work with a tan blazer and matching skirt, blue eye shadow and a gold necklace too.  She looks at me with a look that is part disappointment and part "I understand."  We get into her white mini-van and swing by the IGA to grab a 2-Liter of 7-Up.  The rest of my day (or two days if I play my cards right) will be spent drinking the soda out of a big pitcher with a lid and noisy crinkle straw while I sit on my banana chair and play Nintendo.  I'm not sick.  I'm just overdue for a day off.