forgotten things

Do you ever have those moments when you remember something that you'd forgotten you'd forgotten? Like something you see or hear unearths a memory that you hadn't even thought about since it happened? It's almost like finding a video that you didn't remember buying, but you pop it in the VCR and think, "Oh yeah, I remember really liking this movie."

Well, that's happened to me TWICE in the past 24 hours.

Yesterday I was riding home on the El after having traded my Lollapalooza ticket in for the obligatory wristband, and I was reading the program booklet. I came across one band's bio, in which the author made a comparison to the band Pavement, and I immediately stopped reading. Pavement. I don't know much about that band, but I suddenly remembered that I used to know someone who was a huge fan. Who was that, I wondered. It was a girl who lived in my dorm Freshman year of college, she had really short hair, a Southern accent, and became pretty good friends with my roommate. Her name escaped me, and still does. But I hadn't thought about that girl probably since the last time I saw her in person. Prior to this recovered memory, if I'd run into her on the street and she insisted she knew me, I probably wouldn't have been able to place her. Unless, of course, she reminded me that she was a Pavement fan.

The second forgotten memory resurfaced just a little bit ago this morning. I was reading a blog where someone was recounting a tale of getting her wallet stolen, and I thought to myself, Man, I'm glad I've never had my wallet stolen. But then another memory came to me that I hadn't thought about in years. I may have never had my ACTUAL wallet stolen, but I had some things stolen out of my purse a few years ago when I was at my previous job. I worked at a gift shop, and we were doing inventory. The home office hired a company that came in and used little scanny things to record all of our inventory, after we'd already counted most of it and labeled all the boxes in the back with everything that was in them. One of the women who was with the inventory group looked a little shady right off the bat. And soon enough, we caught her stealing pieces of candy as she tried to separate herself from the rest of the group by going to the other side of the store to work. My manager and I knew about this, but we didn't want to tell the woman's supervisor right away. I don't recall what the reason for this was. But anyway, a little bit further into the process, I went in the back room to get some cash out of my purse to get a drink or something. To my horror, I'd left the locker unlocked, and when I opened up my purse, I discovered some key possessions were missing. My cash was gone (there was only $11, but still), my credit card was missing, and two checks had been torn out of my checkbook. I made a bee line to my manager and explained to her what had happened, and given the earlier situation with the candy, we were pretty sure we knew who had done it. Now we had no choice but to confront the supervisor of the inventory troupe. He took our complaint seriously and did a search and interview with all of his employees. Nothing turned up (of course, she would have stashed the stolen goods first chance she got). But since we'd also told him about the candy incident, the woman was instantly let go. She wasn't allowed to finish the inventory with the rest of the group, and was made to sit outside and wait, since they'd all arrived together in a company van. I felt bad for her, but hey, if you steal stuff and you're dumb enough to get caught, then you deserve what you get. I spent the next hour or so trying to get in contact with my credit card company to cancel the card, and putting a stop payment on the two checks. It could have been much worse. The funny thing about this story is that a few weeks later, the assistant manager was going through a box in the back room and she suddenly calls me to come back there. She hands me a neat little package that she'd pulled from the bottom of the box - wrapped up in two blank checks was a credit card with my name on it.