Memory's Waiting Room
There is a large, crowded waiting room inside our memories, occupied by the characters who have roles in the stories we tell and retell. These characters, in the majority of cases, have their source in real life, though they retain all the embellishments added by the imagination in the repetitions of the tales and anecdotes. It is odd for the characters performing separate phases of the self's own experience to confront each other in the waiting room, with their vastly different ages and degrees of batteredness by life's slings and arrows. The multitude of characters (in supporting roles) sitting and standing around naturally live in hope that the stories that feature them will be given a fresh turn, and that the incidents included in the stories will still prove compelling and perhaps funny to the teller and auditors. They are happy for their scenario to be endowed with supplementary details, whether it be a coat of a different color, a new motive or attitude, more objects to notice and handle, or an improved level of self-awareness about meaning. No character can be sure whether the present telling will be the final one, due to the self's memory failure or weariness with too frequent repetition. In the interim, the waiting room serves as a dimly lit limbo. All the characters can be sure of are the memory slivers pertaining to their particular mini-narrative. They try to hold on to their lines and situational understanding and vague hopes for a slightly less threadbare payoff. Otherwise their heads are nearly empty. The waiting room has no mirrors and there are no communication lines available with the near-strangers belonging to other remembered experiences. Alert! A light just came on in Geoffrey's waiting room. He's starting to tell the story of how his dad had a fatal coronary after eating his favourite dessert--a big, warm wedge of blueberry pie. Geoffrey's dad gets up and shuffles into his by now familiar approach to his death throes. One troubling wrinkle in this narrative is that Geoffrey wasn't present as a witness to the events on the long ago day they occurred. He has no direct memories, only a thin patchwork of bits that he has been told by his mother. What was his father wearing? What exactly did he say while eating the dessert? How did he feel as he trudged upstairs before realizing that something felt very wrong and calling down to his wife for assistance. Geoffrey's dad did the best he could with the flickering outline of his body, his metamorphosing apparel and his half-focused facial expressions. Even his voice was a weak approximation. The old trooper was just glad to have something concrete to do again. He tried to compose his semblance of a face as he sat down at the dinner table, picked up his fork and went into action.