Try to remember

When was the last time you forgot something?
I don't remember.
Is that an oxymoron?
You can't remember when you forgot something.
To commemorate an iconic essayist Nora Ephron who passed yesterday, I'm reprinting one of her essays entitled "I Remember Nothing" with some of my jestful critiques, asides, besides and otherwise humorous aphorisms.
"Why do people write books that say it's better to be older than to be younger? she wrote in "I Feel Bad About My Neck"
"It's not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you're constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday."

"A couple of years ago, the actor Ryan O'Neal confessed that he'd recently failed to recognize his own daughter, Tatum, at a funeral and had accidentally made a pass at her.
"Everyone was judgmental about this, but not me. A month earlier, I'd found myself in a mall in Las Vegas when I saw a very pleasant-looking woman coming toward me, smiling, her arms outstretched, and I thought, Who is this woman? Where do I know her from? Then she spoke and I realized it was my sister Amy.
"You might think, Well, how was she to know her sister would be in Las Vegas? I'm sorry to report that not only did I know, but she was the person I was meeting in the mall.
"In 1964 the Beatles came to New York for the first time. I was a newspaper reporter and I was sent to the airport to cover their arrival. It was a Friday. I spent the weekend following them around. Sunday night they appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." You could make an argument that the '60s began that night, on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was a historic night. I was there. I stood in the back of the Ed Sullivan Theater and watched. I remember how amazingly obnoxious the fans were -- the teenage girls who screamed and yelled and behaved like idiots. But how were the Beatles, you may ask. Well, you are asking the wrong person. I could barely hear them."

I digress.
I remember watching that show on television and likewise I could hardly hear the singing from all the gaga girls screaming.
I also remember the movie "It's Been A Hard Days Night."
George Harrison became enamored with one of the cheerleaders in the movie. He approached her. And he boldly asked her, even without an introduction, "Will you marry me?"
Brusquely she retorted, "No!"
He responded, "Well, will you go out with me?"
She remarked, "No, I've got a boy friend."
When she related this to her friends, they rebuked her by saying, "George Harrison asked you out and you told him you had a boy friend! You fool!"
Ironically she later married Harrison.
Then, Eric Clapton, one of Harrison's best friends fell in love with her.
Clapton once asked her to elope with him.
In the same vein as her first encounter with Harrison, she told Clapton she couldn't because she was married to Harrison.
Discontantly Clapton told her if she didn't he would go off and do heroin for three years.
He penned "Layla" in memory of her and went off on a drug-binge.
Eventually Patty, aka Mrs. Harrison, found Harrison cuckolding Ringo Starr's wife and she divorced him and married Clapton.
Why is it I can remember stories like this, but I have a senior moment remembering what I had for lunch yesterday?

Back to Ephron:
"I went to stand in front of the White House the night Nixon resigned and here's what I have to tell you about it: my wallet was stolen.
"I went to many legendary rock concerts and spent them wondering when they would end and where we would eat afterward and whether the restaurant would still be open and what I would order.
"I went to cover the war in Israel in 1973 but my therapist absolutely forbid me to go to the front.
"I was not at Woodstock, but I might as well have been because I wouldn't remember it anyway."

I digress.
My 18th birthday coincided with the first day of Woodstock: Aug. 15, 1969.
In 2009 approaching my 58th birthday, I told interested friends it was the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and the 40th anniversary of my 18th birthday.
A man heard me talking about this and he bragged that his birthday was also Aug. 15 and his father took him to Woodstock on his 12th birthday.
I asked him about his recollections.
He said he didn't remember any of it because his father had him stoned out on LSD.
What a bummer!

Back to Ephron:
"I am living in the Google years, no question of that. And there are advantages to it. When you forget something, you can whip out your iPhone and go to Google. The Senior Moment has become the Google moment, and it has a much nicer, hipper, younger, more contemporary sound, doesn't it?
"The true Senior Moment is nightmarish. The long search for the answer, the guessing, the self-recrimination, the head-slapping mystification, the frustrated finger-snapping. You just go to Google and retrieve it.
"You can't retrieve your life (unless you're on Wikipedia, in which case you can retrieve an inaccurate version of it)."

So, if you can't remember something, just Google it.
But then will you remember tomorrow or will you have to regurgitate Googling?
Nevertheless, here's to you Nora Ephron!

Faith, endurance pays off

"Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." -- James 1:2-4.

Oh, ye of little faith!
So many naysayers were ready to proclaim the Razorback baseball team persona non grata after they lost to Baylor last week, 8-1, in the first round of the Super Regionals.
Well, relief pitcher Brandon Moore sported a wristband with that Biblical passage on it.
And the Razorbacks rallied to bop Baylor twice and burst into the College World Series with mounds of faith and their endurance paid off.
Sometimes a simple little passage can rally a team or an individual through trials and tribulations and that faith produces endurance and the endurance has its perfect result.
After the Hogs bested Baylor, 1-0, in the finals, Moore knelt and prayed before hopping on the Hogs' celebration.
Moore provided more inspiration for the Razorbacks and that bonding process produced the winning chemistry.
Now as the Razorbacks venture into the College World Series they face further enduring encounters.
Lets hope they persevere again.
But we don't need to pray, just root!
In another inspirational testimonial, a friend suffered a very painful motorcycle accident a few weeks ago.
One of his visitors related to me that he couldn't use his right arm.
Well, this man of faith called an inspirational friend and asked him to pray for him.
Lo and behold, following that prayer, he could move his arm again!
Hallelujah!!

Justice

"If you're poor and you commit a crime, the legal system works quickly and leaves you in pieces all over the highway. If you're educated and have money, the process becomes a drawn-out affair, like a terminal cancer patient who can afford various kinds of treatment all over the world. But eventually he ends up at Lourdes." -- James Lee Burke, "Heartwood"

For the uneducated, Lourdes is a Roman Catholic miracle-healing center in southern France, where thousands of wealthy Catholics sojourn.
The poor who get in trouble with the law can't afford an attorney and end up with a public pretender, er public defender, and they make a deal with the prosecution. They both work for the state of Arkansas.
Unfortunately, those with wealth can afford to hire an attorney who will do anything and everything to help them seek another form of justice.
They have a much better window of opportunity to make a deal which precludes the kind of "justice" the more unfortunate receive.
In other words, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, or are incarcerated because they couldn't afford that high, falutin' attorney.