Monday, July 2, 2007

Cookies part 2: Memories

Lest you worry that I've turned into a domestic goddess and have made cookies 2 days in a row, relax. This is really just a continuation of yesterday's cookies. Leftovers, perhaps.

I find that nearly every time I make cookies, particularly chocolate chip, but other kinds as well, I think back to Sunday afternoons at Sally's house when I was about 12. We would gather in her kitchen on a fairly regular basis to make chocolate chip cookies. We would then use about half the dough to make cookies, and retire to the living rooms with the rest of the dough to eat off of spoons as we watched Top Gun.

Yesterday, as I was cleaning up, I wondered if Sally thinks about that when SHE makes cookies. I haven't seen nor heard from her in years, but I think of her often.

And then I began to wonder what random things make people think of me. We all have memories that come back to us frequently, set off by these ordinary things, like baking cookies. Things that for some reason or another are imbedded in our memories, and intrinsically tied to the event. Do other people harken back to the same memories that I do? What things make my long forgotten friends think of me? How many things are hidden in the back of my cobwebbed brain that I never think of, but that other people frequently call to mind? And what makes someone tie a person to a certain memory?

I recently heard from a friend of mine that she thinks of me whenever she and her girls eat bananas. Bananas? She explained that there are stickers on her Chiquita bananas, and one of them says something like "Put this sticker on your forehead" Well, I used to take the stickers off of fruit (usually oranges, but never bananas, as I just recently began to be able to handle the texture of them) and stick them on my forehead. Why? I don't know. But I would do this, and then walk around with them (I know, I was the essence of cool). As choir was after lunch in HS, I would often have one on my head in choir. Thus, the memory. As I think about this, legions of my campers probably think of me for the same thing, as everyday at lunch when I was a counselor I would stick the navel orange sticker on my forehead, and then later stowe it away on the headboard. Kids used to put their own stickers on my head.

But I digress. Memories seem to do that to me.

So, it just got me wondering about the things that make other people call me to mind. Not that I'll ever really get an answer to that. But there are probably lots of people out there who think of me everytime they __________. And that's kind of a nice thought. As long as they think of me fondly.

P.S. As I write this, I am nibbling on a little bit of cookie dough I stashed away yesterday. It's good to be the Mommy. Don't tell the May Queen. I don't want to share.

7 comments:

Bea said...

I've never thought of that before. Wouldn't it be great if there were a Technorati that could trace links to us in people's brains?

Beck said...

That's a funny thought indeed - the memories that other people have of us. I don't know that I would QUITE like to know, though.

Girlplustwo said...

i love, love, love that you would stick fruit stickers on your forehead.

Christine said...

being the mommy rocks.

cookie dough rocks.

and now i'll think of you, too, when i see those stickers. . .

S said...

Yep, I would have wanted to hang out with that girl who put stickers on her forehead.

And cookie dough...nothing better. Nothing.

thirtysomething said...

Mmmmm. Cookie dough. Enough said. Your secret is safe with me.

Magpie said...

I have the weirdest associations between people and activities. When we had cats, I thought of someone I once knew every time I cleaned the cat box. I don't think he had cats. Or maybe he did, I don't know. I think of someone else every time I do a Sudoko puzzle. The mind is way peculiar.