In college I went out with my friend Movie Critic for happy hour. Whatever the happy hour special was, it definitely involved beer by the pitcher. So, because it was such a good deal, we each got our own pitcher! I’m pretty sure we drank straight from our pitchers, thinking that was the funniest option. After happy hour, we went to our school paper Entertainment Staff editorial meeting and tried to play it cool, which last perhaps five minutes. Then from across the circle of writers I heard a loud HICCUP from Movie Critic and proceeded to collapse into a pile of giggles. Our editor was irritated with us, but pretty accommodating, considering. We definitely didn’t repeat our pre-meeting happy hours after that, but I’ve always looked back on that night as one of my fondest college memories.
Although thinking back to that night makes me smile, I don’t think it’s a great story in the retelling. Where did we go to happy hour? How much were those pitchers of beer that we decided we each needed our own? What made us think we were so hysterical that night? These are details lost to me forever.
My favorite memories are messy. I try to recollect each part of the moment and it’s hard. Usually because I was too busy enjoying the moment. Sometimes because I’ve enjoyed pitchers of beer individually.
On a recent plane trip I started reading The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. On the one hand, I didn’t particularly care for it and it’s long descriptions of the running of the bulls and bullfighting in general. But I also read it as a recounting of a wonderful time spent with friends and filled with the drama that accompanies drinking and crushes and friendship and enmity. Reading it as an outsider, as someone not invited to the party, it’s a little tedious and full of inside jokes.
Sometimes the memory is better as just that, a memory.
That’s not to say I shouldn’t have read the book. (My first Hemingway!) Or that memories can’t be shared beautifully. It’s more to say that I’m grateful for the memories where I can share the highlights and the emotions that accompanied them. I’m okay with forgetting the details if it means I was more engaged in the moment. And I forgive a storyteller for their bumpy retelling of a happy memory for the same reasons.
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