Membering

Last night my bro reminded me of an old TV show I used to watch, Bananas in Pajamas. This show came on in the US about 10 or 11 years ago. I remember that I watched it when I was a senior in high school and the summer after I graduated I bought the stuffed toys. That fall, of 1996, my granny went into the hospital with colon cancer and I gave her one of my stuffed banana to keep her company. He went to the hospital with her and came home and had a semi-permanent place on her bed for quite sometime. I have no idea whatever happened to that cartoon or to the stuffed toys. I'm quite sure my mom or granny might have thrown them away if they got too dirty and weren't washable.

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When I was a kid I would want to pack my own lunch for school. I'd study the way sandwiches looked in advertisements on TV and in my mom's Women's Day magazines and try to recreate them for my own lunch box. Of course I had no idea at age six or seven that they spray paint and glue those sandwiches for the photos or TV commercials. All I cared about was the image and having that image to give to others at school, that I, _______ ________ __________ had the PERFECT motha-otha sandwich.

I would beg my mom to buy good white bread (because usually dad would get us wheat bread from the thrift store that was only like an hour away from being molded and ready to make penicillin). Then I'd get her to buy a head of lettuce amidst much protest on her part because she'd proclaim I wasn't gonna eat it. I might be able to get her to buy a tomato, then American cheese, and ham or turkey. The night before I would artfully construct my sandwich. Planning the layers, standing back from the kitchen table looking at my creation, patiently creating layers of tomato, lettuce, mayo, meat, and cheese, sculpting so the sandwich would stand tall and pretty.

Then my mom would come in and tell me how I should pack everything separate. Put the tomatoes in a separate thing of aluminum foil, put the bread separate from the meat and cheese, lettuce she thought should be wrapped in paper towels and then aluminium foil to keep it fresh. Her theory was that this would make the sandwich actually edible, instead of the soggy mess I'd end up with.

But who the fuck had enough time to sculpt a sandwich during a thirty minute lunch break, one that would be pretty and perfect enough for the entire lunch table to see and want. Or one that would make them think my mom made the best sandwiches.

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Its funny how you can't force memories. Or at least I can't. Sometimes I struggle so hard to try to remember something from childhood, or from my granny, or just from last week and I can't. Its like the harder you try to grab for it, the further away it moves. So I'm just trying to commit them to this thing call the Internet so that they can float in another space until I can figure out what to do with them all in my head.
And isn't it lovely that we can have labels for them as well. To keep them neat and ordered. Wish I had that for my head.