Month: July 2021

How I Finally Solved a Mystery of Memory

by James Wallace Harris, 7/27/21

I made a discovery this morning that’s very important to me. One I had to write about. Whether or not you find it worth reading will depend on if you also have memory mysteries that haunt you too.

I lived in South Carolina twice, however I was very young the first time, and for my whole life I’ve tried to figure out when and where I lived the first time. This mystery of memory only began to matter once I got into my forties and I realized my memories were fading. It became a tiny existential ache. I even remember being disappointed at the time when I asked my mother about this and she couldn’t remember either. How could someone not remember when and where they lived when they were an adult? As I catch up to my mother’s age I might be able to answer that too.

Today I was going through a box of old papers, letters, and photos I found at my mother’s house after she died in 2007. I had put them in a drawer in my closet and forgot about them. Going through them today I discovered clues that may answer the South Carolina memory mystery.

The first clue was a “Certificate of Training” from the Department of Air Force given to my dad for completing 88 hours of Apprentice Aircraft Mechanic (Jet Two Engine) at Shaw Air Force Base dated August 15, 1958. Now this isn’t proof I lived in South Carolina at the same time. My dad sometimes went off without us. For example, on the back of this certificate it says he had previously completed 12 weeks of training at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas and I have no memory of the family living in Texas.

This 1958 date does jive with the one clue I found after the invention of the search engine. I remembered going to the movie theater for the very first time in my life to see Snow Fire when we lived in South Carolina. Google helped me then by providing the movie release date, May 18, 1958. At the time I thought it was a false clue, or a false memory because that was after I had started going to school and I have no memory of going to school when I lived in South Carolina the first time.

The next clue I found was the report card from the third 1st grade school I attended, Watkins Elementary in Hollywood, Florida. It has me finishing the year dated 6/6/58. I transferred there during the third six-week period in 1957.

So this puts me in Hollywood, Florida for the first half of 1958. That was at the Lake Forest subdivision house that I remember as being the first house my parents bought. That memory of ownership might not be true since its just a childhood impression. Some of my all-time favorite memories come from living at that Lake Forest house. [Here it is. Becky and I are wearing cowboy outfits. I’m guessing Christmas 1958.]

The next report card in the box is from 2nd grade at Lake Forest Elementary putting me back in Hollywood, Florida in the 2nd six-week period.

This accounts for the rest of 1958 from about October or early November on. That means I could have lived in South Carolina during June through October of 1958. But I don’t remember attending school there. I’ve always thought I attended two 2nd grade schools but never could remember the first. I can recall being taken to Lake Forest Elementary and enrolled after the year started. I never could remember the first 2nd grade school, but assumed there was one and I just forgot.

I have a new theory from these clues. My parents bought the house at Lake Forest in late 1957 or early 1958, but during the summer my father was sent off for training in South Carolina, and we went with him. We rented a house out in the country and I have many memories from then. But not of going to school, or of leaving. One thing I recall now is I have no memories of my parents ever telling me and Becky we were going to move. I’m guessing we stayed in South Carolina during the summer and my parents just didn’t send me to school at the beginning of the 2nd grade year. Becky didn’t start the 1st until I started the 3rd.

This kind of boggles my mind that my parents didn’t enroll me in school. I would have missed a whole six-week period and part of another. I do remember always being the new kid. I didn’t know it until I got older, but I was always a year younger than the other kids. I started 1st grade at age 5, and didn’t turn six until November 25th. I really should have been held back a year. This might also explain why my grades in elementary school were so poor, and my teacher comments were always about how little Jimmy needs to work harder.

I hope I’ve finally solved the mystery of when and where I lived in South Carolina the first time. I’ve thought we had lived in a city that started with a C, either Columbus or Charleston. Shaw Air Force Base is near Sumter, but Columbus isn’t that far away.

I was six years old that summer, which explains why I had no memory of when and where I lived. At six I didn’t know such things. I don’t think it was until 1959 that I knew about years. But I do have many major memories from that summer of 1958. And that’s another validation. I have no memory of it ever being cold. Some of those vivid memories include:

  • The house we rented had a large wooden porch on three sides of the house. I loved that house.
  • The house we rented had a second floor that wasn’t part of what we rented but me and my sister would go up the stairs to where all this old stuff was stored. I specifically remember stacks of old magazines as high as Becky who I now know was four, and strange old-timey furniture. We never turned on the lights up there so it was always spooky. For years after this I would have reoccurring scary dreams, and the scary place would always be this floor at the top of the stairs.
  • My father put up two homemade swings in the trees outside. I remember him throwing ropes over very high limbs. We could swing almost as high as those limbs. I also remember those trees had long strands of moss hanging from them.
  • We lived out in the country with no paved roads, and those roads went through hills that had been cut away, leaving large sides of exposed dirt that was very red/orange.
  • We had a henhouse and my mother bought 24 chickens and 2 ducklings. Wild dogs that I called wolves would come run off with them and my father shot at the dogs with a .22 he said his grandfather gave him and he would give me when I grew up. After we moved back to Lake Forest I would sneak the gun out to play with on the street and neighbors complained. It disappeared and I never saw it again.
  • The dogs eventually got both ducks and some of the chicks. I remember trying to get the chicks to fly by throwing them up in the air. (Feel bad about that now.)
  • My job was to carry the garbage out back to a pit. My mother promised to buy me a real pig if I did that. In my fifties she finally bought me a concrete pig to keep in the flowerbed because I kept telling her she never paid me.
  • This was the first time I learned about black people. Becky and I played with two kids from a farm nearby. We thought they were rich because they had giant hogs that I wanted. One day my mom told us to go out and play with our little black friends. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I thought black was the color of cars and she had to explain that she meant our friends who were only brown, and I hadn’t even noticed that since we were brown too. My father then told us to always be nice to black kids when this happened. Decades later I learned the Air Force had integrated in the 1950s and my father worshiped the Air Force, so anything they commanded was how we were going to act. I see that as the seed of my liberal philosophy.
  • I’ve already mentioned going to a movie theater for the first time and seeing Snow Fire, but one of my most cherished memories is waking up in the middle of the night and my dad letting me stay up with him to watch the all-night movies. The movie we saw was High Barbaree, which I didn’t know then, but realized later when I was in the 6th grade and saw it again and remember the previous time. I’ve written about this memory many times. The reason why the movie was so important to me was it featured two kids that got separated when the girl’s parents had to move away for a job. I had already been the kid to move away several times in my life by then, and had lost many friends. That scene really resonated with me.
  • I had my first nightmare about dinosaurs at that house that has reoccurred many times over the decades. One of my most popular blog posts is about dinosaur dreams.

I have many other memories from this time period, and that amazes me when I now realize I was only six years old. That’s why for decades I’ve wanted to know when and where all this took place. I’m glad I didn’t throw all this stuff away. And it looks like I will find other clues to memory mysteries in this box too. So be forewarned.

I believe this is what I looked like in 1958.

JWH

I Actually Had Fun at the Urologist (Despite the Pain)

Yesterday I had a urodynamics test. I had been dreading it for weeks because the brochure had forewarned they’d be inserting tubes and detectors up my two lower exit holes. From previous experiences I knew what that was like. However, yesterday’s actual experience was nothing like any of my fantasizing scenarios. It never is. That’s a good philosophical lesson. Don’t ruin your days with worry.

Getting old is full of new experiences, especially relating to medical exams. Often these experiences aren’t very nice, but sometimes they’re interesting, and occasionally they’re fun if you have the right doctor or technician. I like talking with people, and I love technology, but I ain’t too keen when the people I’m talking to are shoving technology into my orifices. Yet, sometimes the overall experience can be fun.

One of the ways you know you’re getting old is when the number of prescriptions and doctor visits start increasing. There’s a feeling of being trapped. You just don’t want to be experiencing what you’re experiencing, but there is no escape. Well, I try to find the humor in such situations, and maybe even a story for my blog.

It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself when your body starts breaking down and you have to do things you really don’t want to do. I’ve found a number of ways to avoid self-pity. Whenever I’m in a waiting room I look around at the other people. Often it makes me feel like the luckiest person in the room. Yesterday while I waited for the urodynamics test the guy on my right was passing kidney stones while crying softly and groaning. The woman on my left came in with a half full urine bag strapped to her left. It filled as we waited. I know what a full bag feels like. I was the lucky one.

As you get older many of your friends will have medical problems too. Another reason I can’t feel sorry for myself is I’m not sure I’d trade my problems for any of the medical problems my friends have, even though some of my friends tell me how much they pity me.

Anyway, I was in the urology waiting room watching the staff come and go from the door that leads back to the testing rooms. I was evaluating each person by whether or not I wanted them to be the person to see me naked and insert catheters up my Johnson. I didn’t want anyone too young because I feel sorry for young people having to see old naked bodies. I didn’t care if they were male or female. I figure I’m a dog at the vet to them. Actually, I’m partial to older nurses who have some experience and compassion. I did see one really good looking blonde and hoped it wasn’t her. It was. At least she was middle aged.

My nurse took me into a room with a very weird looking chair with a giant funnel and bucket in front of it. Next to the chair was a fancy tech desk with two giant monitors hooked to a computer. To the right was a cart with catheters hanging down its side in plastic sleeves, and everywhere was stacks of pads, and small towels.

The nurse was very friendly telling me about how she’d been reviewing my records, so I felt she already knew me. She said she’d step out of the room to give me some privacy. I was to take off my pants and shoes but leave on my socks and shirts, get into that weird chair, and drape little blanket across my lap. I told her I didn’t have any modesty left, meaning she didn’t need to leave, but she did. I always feel weird waiting naked in strange rooms. I wonder why stripping is still considered a part of modesty when they do the things they do to you.

When she returned she showed me the catheters she was going to put up my urethra – I wasn’t sure if it was one double one, or two separate ones – and the flexible computer sensor which I assumed was some kind of ultrasound probe that was going in my ass. Of course, she said rectum, which I think is a gross word, but the socially acceptable term for these gettogethers.

I told her how relieved I was to see how small her tubes were because my other doctors had been shoving much larger ones up the same small holes.

She then activated a switch that raised my chair up in the air. That startled me being up so high. However, it made sense. I was being put up on a rack like a car at Firestone because my nurse needed to get at my undercarriage. I pictured thousands of people she had to look at from that angle and said, “You really have a very strange job.” She laughed.

The purpose of the test was to fill my bladder with water and then drain it, monitoring the flow, amount, and I guess electrical activity.

I won’t try to describe the weird sensations and discomfort the insertions caused. They weren’t too hard to endure, and once they were in I didn’t feel too much. Then she started clipping leads to a EKG like machine to taped on sensors around my lower extremities. This let the computer monitor my electrical activity. It would also show on the screen how many milliliters went in and how many came out, but I wasn’t sure how it did that. Maybe a very sensitive scale under my pee pot.

The nurse then warned me she was going to start pumping water into my bladder. As she did this she told me to imagine I was driving on a highway and I should tell her how desperate I felt to find a pitstop to pee. So I said things like, “I feel the need to pee, so I would be looking for a place.” Or, “I’d be most anxious by now.” Or, “I wish I had an empty bottle.”

91ml in, and 90ml out, way below the normal 400-500ml. She told me I wasn’t like the typical person who has an overactive bladder. They go 12-15 times a day. I was going 28-33 times. But the revelation was my bladder was completely emptying. Up till now all the doctors had told me I wasn’t emptying my bladder.

The nurse said I probably had something different and the doctor would talk about it when I saw him next Friday. But she did say I had probably conditioned myself to pee too often. The nurse said I also didn’t have other indicators of an overactive bladder. That my bladder wasn’t showing spasms. I had been reading about this. Something like a tenth of the U.S., 37.5 million people, have an overactive bladder. Strangely, I had recently read an article on Flipboard about how it was bad to always pee before you leave the house or office, which is something I’ve always done.

What I learned was really good news for me. Although, the doctor might tell me something different, but I’m thinking if I conditioned my bladder to pee too often I could retrain it to pee less. The nurse did say there were some treatments they could do to expand my bladder, but I want to hold off until I see if I can change things myself. Besides, being knocked out and having them stretch my bladder with hundreds of milliliters of water sounds awful.

While all this was going on I chatted with the nurse about her equipment and details of urological problems. She showed me a bag of water and said that was the amount a typical bladder could hold. I told her I didn’t think I ever peed that much. A bottle of store bought water is often 500ml, which is about that size. I got to spend over an hour with this nice nurse, so I grilled her for information. I only see the doctor for minutes, so I’m always left with lists of unanswered questions, and I was overjoyed to talk shop with her.

In other words, I had been dreading yesterday for weeks, but when it finally happened, I was very happy with the results and even considered the experience interesting and fun (although a bit weird and painful.)

I do try to find my inner Pollyanna in these kinds of situations. It really helps when people are snaking tubes up my little Willie.

JWH

I Can’t Take It With Me?

by James Wallace Harris, 7/3/21

That old saying warns us we can’t take it with us, but where does our stuff go when we say goodbye to this plane of existence? If I go first, Susan will just haul all my crap down to Goodwill. If she goes first, I’ll do the same for her. But if Susan goes first, who will process all my cherished possessions?

Before my mom died, she gave some of her stuff as little personal gifts to people she knew at church, or in the neighborhood, or relations. And the stuff she didn’t give away, she assumed either I or my sister would take after she died and cherish for the rest of our lives. We didn’t tell her we had other plans. After my mom died I went through her house looking for sentimental things like photographs, letters, and a few books. My sister wanted more of the knicknacks. My mom’s closets and extra bedrooms were jammed with things she’d had been saving since the 1945 when she married my dad. I told the ladies we had hired to sit with my mother when I was at work that they could have anything they wanted in the house except the stove and refrigerator. The house was clean enough to sell when I came back.

If I was kind and considerate, I’d get rid of my junk now. I’ve been getting rid of stuff for years, but there’s enough left to fill the pickup several times over. When I was young I thought I wanted a smaller house for when I was older, but now that I’m older, I don’t want that at all. This house has become the perfect size for our junk. Susan and I have divided our home into our individual territories. I junk up the den, two bedrooms, and one hall closet. Susan fills up the living, dining room, one bedroom, and the other hall closet. We both encourage the other to get rid of their stuff, but we don’t.

I’m not religious, but what if there was a heaven, and what if we could take it with us? What if St. Peter allowed everyone to bring one U-Haul trailer full of Earthly possessions to heaven, what would you take? Imagine everyone getting a luxury two-bedroom condo in paradise, how would you decorate it? (I wonder if they have the internet up there?)

My friend Connell has been moving out of his house where he’s lived since the 1980s and into a two-bedroom condo. He’s been selling his stuff on Craigslist. I wonder if I should set up an eBay account and sell off my stuff too? But it would be so much easier and put it off until I die and let Susan deal with it. Now I know why I always planned to go first.

JWH