Mem-ries.

This morning I was trying to convince myself to get up for church. Sometimes (Okay, all the time.) it's sort of hard to get up because it's so early and Sam is still sleeping and he's wrapped up in our yellow blanket so he looks like a big human-banana and I just want to stay next to him and be a banana, too.

But anyway, so I was trying to convince myself to get up, and found myself listening to the sound of my eyelids opening and closing. (Do your eyelids make a little sound when they open/close?) I was half asleep, so the sound sent me back to the first time I found out they made a sound: in an old boyfriend's car, after a movie, in the parking lot where we sat for several hours because his car wouldn't start. We were sort of snuggling, but not really, but close enough for him to say, "What's that noise?" When we figured out it was my eyelids, I think it really freaked him out. I mean, in my memory, I think he made me sit on the other side of the car because the sound was so irritating/distracting.

So that memory was so weird that I started remembering other things about dating this man. It was in Denver, my junior year of high school. For various reasons, I was very depressed in Denver. So depressed that I slept most of the time and barely ate. I mean, barely. I lost 30 pounds in 3 months. (If only I could manage to have that brand of depression again. Now I have stuff-my-face depression. I'm so lucky.) And somewhere in there, I started dating this odd man, with an odd name, which we will pretend is Buddy, for the sake of a little anonymity.

Here are things I remembered this morning about dating Buddy, in no particular order: Buddy whispering in my ear "You sing like an angel." Buddy picking me up from school in a pair of bright maroon-ish pants and wrinkly yellow shirt with a huge chocolate ice cream stain down the front. Buddy leaving messages on my answering machine while I was at school so I got to listen to them all when I got home. Buddy kissing me with slobbering kisses all over my face, removing my makeup. Feeling, after hanging out with Buddy, that if anyone ever touched me again--held my hand, put their arm around me, slobbered me with kisses--I would die, or at least vomit. Taking romantic pictures of Buddy and his ex-girlfriend in the snow. (Yes, we were dating at the time. Yes, it was her idea that the pictures be taken, his idea that I be the one to take them.) Reading the lyrics of a sappy Alanis Morrisette song to Buddy over the phone, most sincerely ("You held your breath, and the door for meeee...."). Buddy's glittery T-shirt, the way he drank an entire pitcher of juice in three minutes whenever I made one, the way he didn't cut his finger nails often enough, the way his voice sounded when he told me over the phone that he had kissed the ex-girlfriend and didn't feel bad about it, so, well, sorry.

All of this, and three supremely embarrassing things that still embarrass me to think of:

a. Buddy once insisted that I had a spot of spaghetti sauce on my chin. Insisted and insisted. It was, of course, a zit.

b. Once, when Buddy was at our house, my mother made me drink this super healthy green grassy drink. She was worried because I never ate anything and was trying to insist on some nutrients. This stuff wasn't even wheat grass, which she's made me drink on other occasions. It was worse: imagine mowing your lawn, blending the grass clippings up in a blender with some twigs and leaves mixed in, and drinking that. So, Buddy was over, I had to drink this generous portion of the green drink. I took a swig, and proceeded to spew it all over the kitchen table. With a horrible retching sound escaping my throat, and the green nastiness dripping elegantly off the sides of the table.

c. Buddy was over once, and hungry for lunch. I made him an avocado sandwich, cut it like butterfly wings, and presented it to him. He found eight (count them: EIGHT) of the long hairs of my head in that sandwich. Not eating much makes your hair fall out, apparently.

Wow. They all involve food. No wonder I didn't have an appetite.

But I just did an experiment. Sam's eyelids don't make sounds. And, he says, he can't hear mine. What a relief.