Hitwoman

I remember about ten total conversations I've ever had in any sort of detail. The biggest piece of the pie chart is "times when I embarrassed myself." The rest are times that did not seem particularly consequential at the time, and as I grew older, I realized that they were indeed inconsequential. My brain has a system of sorting things (and throwing memories away) that I clearly have no control over.

I very clearly remember one walk home from school with a girl I knew. We were friends in the way you often were with childhood friends- we lived in the same neighborhood and were roughly the same age, so our parents told us we were friends.

We were walking home one day, and apparently her mother had done something that she was not happy about (what could it possibly have been? she wouldn't buy her butterfly hair clips? she wouldn't let her go to the movies with the 'boyfriend' she was too scared to talk to in person? she wasn't allowed to use the computer for the four hours it would take to load a single webpage?) She did a sort of hair flip, which my brain may have added retroactively for affect, and declared dramatically- "Mo." (I was still using this androgynous, Stooge-y nickname for my given first name at this point) "You have to promise me something." I guess I nodded or thrust out my pinky or something because she was satisfied enough to continue, "If I ever. EVER. end up like my mother, just kill me."

For whatever reason I remember, vividly, this conditional request for me to ultimately bump someone off, that I solemnly swore to undertake should it become necessary. Not once did either of think I would find myself needing to go through with it.

I rarely go back to church anymore. I grew up going every single Sunday. We would have Sunday School in the AM before the service, and our family was Extremely Involved. I was expected to make an appearance every week with no exceptions. Naturally, I loved it (I did not.) but it was important to my mom and so we went.

When I'm back in Philadelphia now, as an adult, I'll go every once in a while. My beliefs haven't really changed since teenagerhood (it's sort of an agnostic flavor of cynicism laced with a stubborn refusal to declare myself an atheist because fuck if I know why we're here) but most of the people I knew from the community have grown up and moved on, and there is a new batch of families at the services, most of whom I don't recognize.

When I do go, however, there is one group of church personnel that never seems to change, and that is the church choir. Every Sunday, a very slightly different combination of the same people shuffle up to the altar and sing their hearts out along to a flamboyant backing track with a confusing concentration of African percussion. And every time I've come home and gone to a service, I have seen my friend shuffle right alongside her mom, turn to the congregation and proceed to look and sing EXACTLY like her mother.

If we go by sight, the level of similarity is unnerving. She sports the same bangs as her mother, her adult facial features are an exact replica. They even wear the same choir robe (although to be fair, so does everyone in the choir.)

So the question becomes- at what point do I have an obligation to murder her? I feel at the moment that I don't have enough information. Just because they look identical, doesn't mean she's become her mother. And further- maybe she's exactly like her mom, but she's happy. I could ask her I guess but, we stopped being friends in the way that you often did with your childhood friends- you no longer live in the same neighborhood and while you remain roughly the same age, there aren't two sets of parents actively facilitating playdates for you.

I do wonder why my brain holds on to certain things and lets other things go. My memory is notoriously bad. I can't tell you the general plot of books that I loved reading. I don't remember that quote from a TV show (unless it's The Office, when I can, but only because I've seen it more times than a healthy human should.) I remember pieces of the birthday parties I had as a kid, but mostly because of the photo evidence I've seen since.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why I have such a hard time breaking out of behavioral patterns that aren't helping me. While I remember the vague feeling of the consequences, I don't remember each and every fact of my past experiences, which leaves me open to doing some of the same things over and over and expecting different results. Is that actually insane or just extremely human (is there a difference?) And while we're asking the tough questions, how is it that Gael Garcia Bernal is as hot as he is?