By Trina Machacek
Yes, there are partial or varying forms of falling. I am partial to the partial type of falling. Rather than being partial to the full fall. But. Yes, a falling down “but.” I don’t want to toot my horn; I seem to be able to remember nearly every fall this body has taken. Come to find out it may be because I have this thing called hyperthymesia. Yeah, now there’s something to write home about.
Trina Machacek
I have wondered a lot and been asked a lot how I come up with something to write about each week. I mean come on. I’ve been at “Is This You?” for some 689 weeks. Now let me see. Carry the three, divide by fifteen and, well the 689 is just shy of thirteen and a half years. You would think the well in my brain would run dry. But, nope. It still overflows night and day with ideas. Enter hyperthymesia. Oh my friends, that is a rare condition allowing individuals to vividly recall almost every day of their lives, typically starting around age 10. Well I can remember back farther. Like when I was five, I was a flower girl in my dad’s nephew’s wedding. Shoot I can even remember the little dress I wore.
I thought about that wedding and dress for a very long time and often wondered if it was just something I made up. Until one day when my family was at said dad’s nephew’s home when I was a teenager and I asked to see the wedding pictures. There I was, all cute and stuff AND in the dress I remembered. As vivid as if I was there. It was actually strange but reaffirming too.
So, why bring that up? Well here we go. I crash landed on the floor recently. Not a big thing. The cat zigged and I zagged and the cat food in the can I was carrying flew like the Aero Spaceline Super Guppy, (see picture) -I usually don’t use visuals, but I really like the Guppy. Moving on.
After clearing the deck of the cat food and going on about my day, off and on I began to think about all the times in my life I have crashed my body against terrafirma. Oh, there have been many. As I am sure we all have.
When I was being taught to ride a bike, by my sister, I fell so much we finally brought the bandages and Bactine out to the sidewalk. Come to think of it. We had the first Urgent Care facility. That was in 1960. I was five. I still love Bactine. Where else can you get an antiseptic anesthetic over the counter—and it even smells good. Again, moving on.
So I of course went to the street to see if all the falls I could remember was an anomaly. One of my friends may not remember all her falls, but she remembers the big ones for sure. She was riding a horse and the horse got hinkey, started to go down and before she knew it the danged thing rolled over, she leaped off and then the silly horse got up, saddle now slung on his side, and he ran like the dickens. I wish I could have seen that fall!
Most everyone remembers when they fall and hurt themselves. Especially if a bone is broken! Then there are us that remember things like playing kick ball in the fifth grade. The smell of that red rubber ball. The sound of the gravel as your shoe starts to slide across it, just before gravel and knee meet and the gravel tears your skin to shreds. Do you remember all those scabs we had growing up? How they felt. How if you picked at them too soon, they bled again. Oh. My. Goodness.
So, it’s memories that make me tell stories. It’s the memory box of goodness and badness in life that I draw from to write. The best thing is that most of the time Is This You? will bring a memory back to each person that reads. That is the best memory for me. When I hear someone say they see themselves in the situations I happily get to write about.
After all, after reading about all of my falling downs, and that little girl, in a fluffy white taffeta dress with little champagne glasses embroidered on the front in lovely pastel colors, what do you see when you look back at you? Truly now, Is This You?
Trina lives in Diamond Valley north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
