Return of Memoryfest - Day 16/31

[bironic]

16. Middle School (?)

We were driving back from Lens Crafters; I'd just gotten a new pair of glasses and was admiring the way the leaves on the trees looked so sharp and defined from the rear passenger seat. As we approached the T-shaped intersection between two residential streets on the way to our house, where the road we were on dead-ended and we needed to make a right turn, I shifted my gaze to the white picket fence along the perpendicular street and thought about how easy it would be to just keep going straight, drive right through the fence and across the lawn of the house there, maybe even into the house. I wondered what prevented someone from doing that, from just not turning the car.

That’s the first time I remember conceiving of the human instinct of self-preservation.

Comments

[thewlisian-afer.livejournal.com]

Hm. I was a lot younger than middle school-aged the first time I wondered something like that. But it was probably around middle school that I realized that while I wouldn't do that because it could hurt other people, those other people wouldn't do it because they might hurt themselves. I think I'm still a little shaky on the concept, actually. hahaha I was a volunteer firefighter for a while. I'm prone to going outside (sometimes barefoot) in the middle of the night to investigate strange noises when my parents are away in Virginia. I've chased bears off my front porch... Yeah, I'm really not very careful with myself.

Anyway. Memory. Hm. Okay, this has nothing to do with anything, but I remembered it the other day and decided it would need to be shared before the month was over, and since your memory isn't triggering anything specific, I'll use it today. :D

I must've been somewhere between ten or twelve when this happened. I was in church and I guess I had a sore throat or something because I was sitting out of choir. My church was very small. The choir consisted of me, my cousin, the pastor, the pastor's wife, the organist, my godmom, a lady named Doris and Doris's nephew Emil. On a good week there would be maybe twice that many people in the congregation. Sometimes the choir was bigger than the congregation. Anyway, as I recall, it was actually a little "busy" this particular week. I was sitting near the back of the group with my grandmother. When it was time for a few moments of silent prayer, I saw gramma moving out of the corner of my eye so I looked over at her to see what she was up to. She was picking fuzz balls off her sweater -- you know how they pill up sometimes? -- and sort of rolling them between her fingers. She noticed me looking, held up one of the fuzz balls and told me, rather loudly (especially considering it was supposed to be a moment of silence), "Not a booger." ... ... Needless to say, a majority of the people there heard her, and I had to excuse myself to go outside and crack the hell up. Oh, gramma. ♥