A look at forgetting. Growing a thicker shell. Not being ruled by the past. And hating it.

When I was a kid, for awhile, they thought I was going to grow up to be a nerd. I mean, not a nerd like Artie's a nerd, but like... one of those people who just knows more stuff than other people.

Before preschool, I tested at like a genius level for something. Spatial awareness or something like that, because I didn't bump into walls and I could do those dumb shape puzzles really well. So they started putting me in these weird classes where we'd look at computers and listen to music all day. That's probably how come I still can't do math, because I didn't actually have a real math class until I was in third grade.

That was around the time they realized I was dumb. But creative. So Mom let me take drum lessons and she didn't mind when I'd have a bunch of other kids over to play, because even though we were really loud, the crap we came up with was awesome. Mom even said so. She loved this one thing we wrote... I can't remember how it went.

We'd write these songs about aliens and fucked up romances with bitchy girls. Stuff we saw on TV and in the movies. Haha. Yeah. Once, we wrote the theme song to ID4. It went like...

Aliens gonna kill us
Will Smith gonna save us
Welcome to Earth
Now...
Something something... crap. I can't remember. Something about "You don't want to die a virgin". Anyway, it was so good. I know it didn't rhyme. But it was the way we played it, man.

The teacher got mad though, because he wanted us to play real music. So I went through my mom's tapes. Seriously, tapes, we didn't even have a CD player in the house until I was like 14. But we had this awesome hi-fi thing from the 50s or something, with a duel tape deck and a record player. And Mom had about 400 tapes; at least she did before I broke most of them.

So I had about 20 favorite songs after awhile, that I'd just sit and listen to, and let all these feelings go through me. It was like every time I listened to those songs, even in the dead of winter, it was like being in the perfect summer evening, right at sunset, on the patio with the hot wind blowing your hair around everywhere and you feel like you're floating, you can't even feel your legs, and you just let yourself go completely limp and let the music carry you off.

I know you don't forget things like that. You can go for 20 years without listening to that song, whichever one it is, and it can come on in the grocery store and you're right back there, nine years old, sitting on that patio again. It all comes back. Being able to remember exactly how you felt.

Anyway, I put a bunch of those songs on my phone. I didn't have an iPod or anything, but the phones Mom got on her plan had built in mp3 players, so I put a bunch of my old favorites on there so I could have them ready in case I ever decided I wanted to sing one of them for Glee Club. So far I haven't.

Mostly, I did it because I was feeling homesick. For awhile, it really helped. I'd listen to the songs and cry a lot. I'd cry because I missed my house. I missed my old life. I missed my fucking childhood. But mostly I'd cry because I could still remember all of it like it was still happening around me.

Kind of cruel, actually, I thought. Like, why can I still remember every single detail of this shit, right down to the fact that I'd always drink dnL (remember dnL? 7up Upside Down! Fuck!) and I can't do anything about it except remember it?

I'd get pissed when we'd drive by the house... the old house I mean, and the new people would have done something different. They built a deck over the patio. My patio. They put on a new roof. They put in nice new windows, to replace the pieces of shit we had, that you needed to put a book or something in to keep them open.

I swear I wasn't stalking them or anything. We'd just drive by the house a lot. You have to go by there to get to the damn grocery store, so we couldn't help it.

Anyway, I lost my phone for like six months. I didn't find it until July. It was the middle of the night, really hot in the basement (Kurt's always cold) and I couldn't sleep, so I plugged in my headphones and decided to see what songs were on the phone.

That one came on. That one that was always supposed to take me right back to those great old summer nights. I felt that old whoosh of nostalgia for a second, and then...

Nothing.

It was like I couldn't remember why it had ever mattered to me.

No, that's not right. No. I could remember. I could remember that it used to make me feel amazing. Remember? Like flying. Or floating. The sunset. The summer. The wind.

But I couldn't feel any of it.

I couldn't remember how to feel. Like... how would Rachel or Kurt or someone smart put it? Intellectually? I guess. Intellectually, I knew how to feel. But I couldn't remember why. And I couldn't remember how.

I tried to picture the house. The patio. The dnL. The grainy, blurry, mostly forgotten bits and pieces that came back to me didn't help at all. God! I might as well have been trying to remember my first day of kindergarten!

The patio they built over, the pop they discontinued, the music that was playing out of my phone into those headphones just... didn't mean a thing. All of it was gone, all of it is gone. And it's like I don't even care anymore.

I started to freak out. Turned on a different song. Same thing. Remembered the whos and the whats. Couldn't figure out the whys.

I realized that in the time I'd spent believing that just beneath the surface, there was a basement's worth of memories, someone or something had slowly been throwing those memories away, replacing them with who the fuck knew what kind of other bullshit.

I remembered the first time I'd accidentally hit "record" on one of my mom's tapes, and let it sit for about a minute before I realized what happened. When I went to play it back, right there in the middle of the song was a minute of my confused voice. There was no getting that original recording back.

My fucking brain was a tape and I'd been recording over the good stuff.

I wanted to close my eyes, hide under the blankets. Not create a single new memory. I turned off the phone and went to sleep.

Honestly, I never really did get over that. I still kind of freak out when I think about it.

I wish I had some smart thing to say about all of it, but no. Instead, I'm just pissed. I wish my brain would have left some of the feeling, when I got over being homesick. Just a little of it, rather than a fucking memory of feeling stuff.

What the hell good is that?