2006-11-15
dollars and no sense
|I had a random memory around 5:12 this morning while I was feeding the baby. When I have a memory jump up like that, I like to track the neural pathway of how I got there. So here's the map.
I was sitting in the dark, feeding the baby, and I heard one of my other kids kind of say something in her sleep. I wasn't sure if she was waking up or not. But that spawned the thought that the older girls fell asleep last night within 15 minutes. I know that, because I went upstairs to kiss them goodnight and both of them were asleep.
From there I was thinking how I get freaked out when the Tooth Fairy has to visit my kid. I'm afraid my kid is going to wake up and bust the Tooth Fairy in action. And that is how I arrived at the Random Memory.
(Drum roll, please.) When I was about 10 years old I suddenly started getting a dollar under my pillow every night for about a week and a half.
I don't remember how I discovered the first dollar, because by 10 I think all of your baby teeth have fallen out. So that would mean I was done with the Tooth Fairy. And I didn't make it a habit to check under my pillow each morning, so the discovery part is still a mystery.
But I remember trying to get forensic on each dollar's ass to figure out where it came from. I was sniffing them and analyzing the cracks and folds to see if I could glean any bits of information. I also remember sniffing the bills in my father's wallet and my mother's wallet to see if I could get an olfactory match.
I never was successful in my attempts to figure it out. I think I got about $10 when all was said and done. A little bit later (a couple months, maybe) my dad finally admitted that he put the dollars there as an experiment. He just had the idea and wanted to know how I would react.
I remember not being satisfied with that explanation. It seemed like it caused a lot of mental anxiety for me, trying to figure out where the dollars were coming from, and the final answer didn't put those questions to rest.
2006-11-15 at 6:25 a.m.
