Who’s wearing my teeth‽

TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 2010


Who’s wearing my teeth‽

So right off the bat with the green underline. :ROLLEYES: It is an interrobang! I remember solving this problem previously… Moving on.

It was my 40th birthday party. It was and remains the only surprise birthday party anyone ever gave me. I remember very few of my own birthday parties and that is not because I am only two.

I do remember the green Jello coming out of my nose after my next younger sister said something especially funny. Although she was very young; she was and still is a champion of that. I had thought it was the fourth youngest’s birthday because I think it was July. She was the only one born in the summer. Mom had one spring, one summer, two fall and one winter offspring. I hold the mailman personally responsible for this.

Dad was a mailman.


My brother and I were wearing our Little League uniforms. I was jealous of his. I think I had some kind of blue baseball cap since so many teams had blue hats back in ‘the days’.

My brother was on the Tigers. I have not a clue what the name of the team was that was printed on my shirt; the team stuck with picking me last. The Tigers had Tigers on their yellow shirts in black Brush Script. They wore black hats with a yellow bill with a T on the cap. It was kind of like a Baltimore Orioles hat with yellow instead of the gaudy orange. Due to budgetary constraints of Little League; the T was ironed on. There was no embroidered Tiger. Tigers were a heck of a lot fiercer than black orange and white birds or so I thought at the time.

Fraternal grandmother of German extraction was there. We were outside at the redwood picnic table before cutting redwoods and making picnic tables and benches out of them was a federal crime and a sin against nature. I am sure it was a Birthday Party because in the photo that is captured in my brain; Grandma was wearing a red small dunce cap that said Happy Birthday on it in white Brush Script. And, the Jello was green because Grandma liked Lime Jello. I see that picture in color even though it was a black and white. There was some real whipped cream mixed in with the small chunks of Jello so at least it was not fluorescent when it was launched from my nostrils like a professional athlete clearing his nose, but to the tenth power. It stung a lot and I got it all over my uniform shirt. It actually got all over everybody and everything. I was in the second grade because I gave up my career as a little leaguer after that year. Of that at least I am certain; 100% positive.

I am not sure whose birthday it was because now that I think about it we should have had a cake. Doing the high math I am not even sure if the third youngest was born yet and like more than a couple of things about my German Grandma, things are a bit cloudy. Possibly it was her birthday and she had been born in a summer month we played little league. I remember her smiling a lot that evening right up until she was covered in green Jello.

Memories, as I found an article in Smithsonian magazine on “Making Memories”, are often not memories. The Smithsonian has conveniently made the home delivered article available on their website at: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html found thru the miracle that is Google.

Big events that we remember are sometimes called “Flashbulb Memories”. Studies indicate that as well as someone thinks they might remember all the facts; they often are “surprisingly inaccurate”. So the neuroscientist (who must not drive a Corvair, because his name is Nader), found out what I have known all along. CRS (Can’t Remember Stuff)… or the CRS syndrome is also amplified by the fact that many of the things we do remember, we just plain remember incorrectly.

A perfect example of “the CRS not even being correct problem” is the memories of neuroscientist Nader and many others who were certain they saw video of the first plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center on the day it happened. Research that was conducted found that 73% of the folks studied with a memory of the event also got the same thing wrong. Since the video of the first plane was not aired until the second day; there is no question about lots of people having faulty memories. Only about three quarters of them.

This is making quite a few folks question some basic assumptions they and the majority of the population of the world (and even the courts) have held since about the beginning of recorded time. Researchers are now attempting to find out which kinds of memories are more susceptible to change than others. “Flashbulb Memories” probably are close to the top of the list.

I remember for sure that the Birthday Party was during the summer and that no flashbulb was used on the Brownie camera to take the picture because it was summer and it was Daylight Savings Time. The only non-natural light was the Citronella Candle burning in a vain attempt to chase the mosquitoes off. I have to check with the keeper of the archives to see if he has that specific picture to double check whether or not Grandma in fact wore that red birthday hat or if she might have been a Conehead and possibly it wasn’t even was a birthday.

I know it was Lime Jello because anyone that has ever had Lime Jello come out of their nose because of a fit of laughter filed those fond remembrances deep in their memory banks. The most acute memory remains the stinging sensation and debilitating pain deep inside my nasal cavities. Even if a “Flashbulb Memory”, because someone took a picture just at that second everybody at the table got slimed in Lime Jello; that one is awfully hard to put behind me.

So I am thinking, where the heck is the birthday present that Maijken gave me? Not at that party when I was in the second grade, the one at the surprise party. I had more than sufficient alcohol to dull most of the memories of that evening. I am certain that she gave me a black Tee shirt with a picture of some false teeth and the copy: “Who’s Wearing My Teeth‽” on the front of it. As much as I treasured that Tee shirt I know I did not give it away or lose it.

I am truly hoping that someone has a picture of me in that shirt and that it and the entire party was not just another “Flashbulb Memory.”

And the final indignity of the Green Jello nite was the attack by the Baltimore Oriole that had a straw colored sock hanging in the maple near the picnic table. I am not sure whether he was mad about the decimation of the redwood forests or he just liked lime Jello,