Hey, remember me?

My friend Mark is rad. He makes movies, he writes novels and screenplays, he's an awesome graphic artist. He has a creative idea and just makes it happen. As a person who thinks myself out of things way before they are anywhere near happening, I find this very impressive. I don't know how he does what he does, but I wish I did. Plus, Mark is brilliant and hilarious.

The other day I was reading his blog where he was writing about a Howard Hughes biography he was reading. Mark talked about how "popular imagination" has a tendency to re-write history and make us alter, or in some cases, completely erase everything that happened. He wrote about the tendency we have of freezing people in time and forgetting everything else that they did. His examples were Howard Hughes being remembered for two foot long fingernails and jars of pee instead of a man who revolutionized air travel and Helen Keller stuck in our memories as a flailing child instead of a radical Socialist who helped found the ACLU.

This lead him to wonder about the last impressions that we leave on people. Not only how we will be remembered after we die, but how we are remembered by someone we lose touch with.

Well, this really struck a nerve with me because I have been thinking about this very thing lately. Being a girl who has moved many times and drifted away from many people, I wonder how some of those people remember me. There have been a few of these people that I have been thinking and dreaming about over the last few weeks. I haven't spoken with either of them in over 10 years, one I dated briefly and the other I loved at first sight and became close friends with. Both relationships ended oddly with both of them dropping out of my life and never calling again.

I'm long since over the fact that they stopped calling and just moved on. Nowadays, I wonder if either of them remember me and if they do, how am I in either of their memories? Both of them knew me when I was wanting to be an actress. Do they see me as a failure because they have never seen my name in lights? Do they assume I'm socked away in some Midwestern town, married with kids because they didn't think I had it in me to do anything else? Will I ever see either one of them again so I can set the record straight?

Mark believes that we owe it to ourselves to write our autobiographies. To give ourselves the opportunity to set the record straight to anyone who would read it. I don't think either Chris or Adam would read it, but it just might help me iron some sense into my weird ass life.


Sidenote: Mark has a "List of 9" on his website. The current list posted is "Nine Movies That Would Be Better If Alfred Hitchcock Was In Them" and it's awesome. My favorite is "The Seven Year Hitch". Check it out on the "Links" section of my blog. Great stuff.