Partly Sunny Mind

I sometimes think I would be a happier person if my memory wasn’t that good. I love that I can recall certain events so clearly, but the down side is that not all of the events remembered are happy ones. I watched “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” the other day and it made me think. The focus of the movie was a company that provided a service that allowed you to isolate and erase the memories of an entire relationship with someone. The customer would take all of the physical reminders of that person, place them in a box and go to the company offering this service to have his or her memory wiped. Obviously this can only go so far—I can’t imagine this working if you have had kids with this person or you wanted to erase a parent or a sibling, but what if you could erase someone from your past? You could do away with the entire moping/dwelling period and move on, just as innocent and optimistic as you were before you met the asshole erased. Given a couple of recent stories from people I know who dated someone who clearly screwed up things in a spectacular fashion, that sounds pretty good idea to me.
I liked the movie, which is a great thing because it means I was able to get over Jim Carrey’s obnoxiousness. If you haven’t seen it, he’s not too obnoxious in this one, I promise. I actually think he does fine when he’s not making a concentrated effort to be annoyingly over the top, and someone must have liked that over the topness, because it’s what made him famous—it wasn’t me. I will never forgive him or Dr. Seuss’s widow for allowing the travesty known as the live action full feature film Grinch.

The next six words are rarely uttered from me so pay close attention: My favorite Jim Carrey movies are--

(in no particular order)

Dumb and Dumber—

(pauses to let that sink in)
Okay I know, I know, this one is over the top, yet for some unknown reason, I’m compelled to watch it whenever I catch it on TBS. Come on, she says “Austria” and he goes “Well put another shrimp on the barbie!” E? How is that not funny? No? Not even a little?

--The Truman Show

annnnnd (wait for ittttt)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (and how can anyone not love Kate Winslet? If you don’t then please leave now). Now, if you hate Jim Carrey and wish to never read this blog again, that’s fine. My feelings won’t be hurt, too much. Actually that’s a lie. Seeing as there are probably three regular readers, it actually would hurt me some, but I would eventually get over it. Or, I know, I will just have the memory of you leaving my blog erased and continue writing as if I hadn’t been outcast by a Jim Carrey hater.

Anyway, what if this were a real service? I can think of a few things taking up space in my mind that I could probably function more effectively without. It’s not like I’d be wiping out years of my life, just a few days here and there would suffice. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky that there’s not to dispose. Most of it is good, and some of the not so good stuff has been live and learn, sure it sucks donkey balls but it’s character-building sort of material. Given some stories I have heard from the dating side, it’s evident that I am still pretty wide eyed about many things. I wouldn’t say I have “eternal sunshine” but maybe it’s “partly sunny” most of the time.

Now what if the business expanded beyond the relationship erasing services? Perhaps we could just get into deleting some of the more minor memories. The ability to unsee, unknow, unsmell, untaste, unhear, and unremember brief moments—mere seconds, really--would be priceless. With YouTube and people sending out messages to such “You’ll be sorry you clicked the link, but go on ahead, I triple dog dare you” items popping into our lives on a daily basis, erasing those seconds or minutes could be pretty lucrative, and I imagine not quite as messy and drastic as erasing entire memories of other people. Even if some of these things aren’t real, you still store them away. Now at least, can rest assured that the memory of the image/smell/taste/other brain searing negative item will no longer pop into your head at random moments.

So what about you? Would you erase something or someone from your memory or do you have more of a “Facts of Life”* philosophy?
*(You take the good,
you take the bad, 

you take them both and there you have
The Facts of Life, the Facts of Life.)