Dates. Not the wrinkly things in the produce aisle that somehow cost $14 a pound, but the numbers we memorize, celebrate and occasionally forget at our own peril.
Anniversaries. Birthdates. Death dates. You know exactly what I am talking about. We are obsessed with them, especially birthdays. Society expects us to remember not only our own birthdays, but also those of our spouses, children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. And that is just family. Add neighbors, college roommates and the kid whose gym socks could clear out the sixth-grade locker room, and suddenly you need the memory capacity of a supercomputer just to buy greeting cards on time.
Most of us now outsource this task to digital calendars that chirp reminders at us like needy little robots. My dad handled things differently. He wrote birthdays in ink on a coil-bound calendar from the local farm cooperative and kept it on the kitchen table next to the salt and pepper shakers. Low-tech, but effective.
Even so, missing a birthday usually earns you only mild disappointment or a passive-aggressive Facebook comment. Forget your wedding anniversary, however, and suddenly you are starring in your own disaster movie. The only real escape hatch is if your spouse forgets, too, which has happened with Jolene and me more times than responsible adults should probably admit.
Wedding anniversaries are different in another way: Nobody expects you to remember theirs. Sure, there are thoughtful souls like my mother, who sent anniversary cards. But most anniversaries stay within the couple, where they belong, tucked safely between dinner reservations and arguments about whose idea it was to buy decorative throw pillows.
Death dates are another story entirely. I remember the day Elvis Presley died because it happened on my birthday, which feels like an unfair trade. Beyond that, I generally try not to store death dates in my mental filing cabinet. I would rather remember the people themselves than the day they left. My mother kept track of the death dates of her parents with the precision of a historian, and that probably explains why my own brain treats death dates like spam calls. Still, I understand why some people memorialize them. Grief does not come with instructions, expiration dates or a customer-service hotline. Everybody handles it differently.
Meanwhile, I cannot reliably remember how old I am. Whenever someone asks, I have to stop and do math like a confused game-show contestant. Even then, I am never completely certain I got it right. But my junior high locker combination? That masterpiece is permanently etched into my brain: 34-15-3. Apparently, my memory decided that accessing gym shorts in 1982 was critical survival information.
LeMar Koethe, the local fitness guru who founded 7 Flags Fitness Center in Clive in the 1990s, once told me, “Your age is only a number. How you take care of yourself determines your real age.” He was right.
So I am going to stop obsessing over dates, at least the numerical kind. The nutty, fruity kind? Those are perfectly fine, and eating them might even help me live longer. But who is counting?
Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
Editor and Publisher
Times Vedette digital newsletter
shane@gctimesnews.com
641-332-2707