A note from Dr. Hendrix
I keep circling a belief that I only really know what I have directly lived — and yet my memory keeps hiding things, like the seventh-grade homeroom moment beside a girl I had a crush on that surfaced out of nowhere. This piece sits with that mystery. I wrote it because our buried experiences are a bigger part of us than the ones we can easily recall.
The only things I know are those things I experience directly.
And I know that I don’t remember all the experiences I’ve had directly.
Sometimes I will experience something that triggers a past experience I’ve never remembered until that moment.
How many experiences are hidden in my memory bank?
One day, a memory from seventh grade popped up.
I was sitting in homeroom next to two girls, one on whom I had a crush.
Out of nowhere, noise slipped out from the back of my pants.
My hope was the two girls didn’t hear it.
They started laughing.
I was so embarrassed I missed school the next day.
But that memory stoked another forgotten memory of mine.
I was seven and laid up with polio.
I was in the hospital for a month.
Hot packs were a daily event.
Pain in my legs persisted.
I became tight as a board.
Therapists placed a black mask over my nose and mouth, and in came gas.
All of the sudden I became limber.
My physical therapists started lifting my legs to 90 degrees.
I became super relaxed. I thought maybe I was in heaven.
Then came my first public experience with tooting.
The therapists started laughing.
One was a female, I had a crush on her too.
From these memories I decided that’s why I never did it
growing up in public – I didn’t even burp.
Now, as I grow older, I can’t promise that.
So I stay inside.
My wife says I need to get outside more.
To please her I started walking the streets of our hood.
But I wear a cap and sunglasses.
One day early in the morning two college girls passed me.
They were high stepping like cheerleaders.
All of the sudden, one of them cut the wind.
They started laughing.
I then started laughing.
They even introduced themselves to me,
as two of the cheerleaders at the U.
No shame, no embarrassment.
They think anything a cheerleader does is cool.
Well, that’s the end of this story!