Selective memory or selective amnesia?

When I was dating my wife (13 years ago) a family friends invited us, together with my brother-in-law and my mother-in-law, to spend a weekend out of town. We went to a ranch located between Tijuana and Tecate, in the mountains.

The day we were coming back started raining. Because if there is heavy rain you would be trapped in the place until the road is OK to drive and that could take several days. In the rush of getting out of there we pack some of the things in one car and started leaving. After 5 minutes we noticed nobody else was following us, so we stopped and my boss (who would be my “compadre” some years later) and me went back walking to see what was happening.

The other car had humidity in the ignition system and we had to wait and find a way to dry the thing. We walked to the house and on our way back, we saw a bull up the hill. We were walking perpendicular to the bull, and the people in the first car (where my mother-in-law was) could not see us because of the hill. Suddenly, my “compadre” yells at me “RUUN!!” and takes off. I followed him, never looking back and waiting for him to stop and tell me is a joke. He never did. His father-in-law was fixing the other car, but had a complete unobstructed view of the thing. When we walk past him I thought he was having a heart attack; he was laughing so hard. He still tells the story and laughs. In any case, he was the only witness; but now, my mother-in-law swears she saw it too (even though it was impossible for her to see anything at the time).

She knows the story at heart (having heard it so many times) that she actually thinks she was there watching when it happened.

Same thing with anybody. Hear a story so many times and finally you would be there, even if you weren’t.

It works the other way around; my wife hates this story when I tell it: “the second time I asked her out we kissed at the end of the date and then she told me ‘Are we dating now?’ So I never asked her to be my girlfriend”. That is what I would say, because I think it makes the story more interesting; but is not exactly what happened (for the record, I did ask her) but sometimes even I get confused because at some moments I am not sure what really happened ;^)

Anyway; why the hell am I writing at 4:00 am in the morning? Well, I woke up at 3:30, my wife woke up too (but I did not do it!) and I had a message warning in the shackle I carry from work (called a Dingleberry by my previous boss) so I read Vicky’s comment on one of the posts and started thinking about how to answer. The I read (s)wine’s comment and I decided to get up and answer both.

I have not yet. I wanted to write something else first to take my mind and wake up completely; now is 5:30 and there is nowhere to go. You can follow my trail of thoughts in the previous and this post. But I am not convinced yet of any answer. I will do it now. Let’s see how it goes.

See you around.