One of the more irksome things about aging is how selective our memory of the past becomes. It is increasingly hard to remember gentle things like my mother’s face or the sound of her voice or the feel of her hair in my hands. I can vividly remember unpleasant things like dumb temper tantrums I had as a kid, and those memories aren’t actually important to me now. They are not the ones I wanted to carry the farthest through my life.
There was one occasion where I had an epic tantrum. I am certain I was six-years-old and it was in a gift shop in Banff, Alberta. They had racks of personalized pencils, keychains, and knives. Séan, my first name, was common enough back in the day thanks to a certain Scottish actor. My own name has an accent over the E that his lacks, but, eh, close enough.**
Back to the personalized swag… The pencils were nice, but I already had those because my grandmother made sure I had a steady supply of customized pencils that said SEAN MCCORMICK on them. I think everyone got those from their grans back in the early seventies. I also had a couple of SEAN keytags at that point as well. What I didn’t have, and that I really REALLY wanted, was a knife with my first name on it. I showed one to mom and asked if she would buy it for me. I was told no, I was too young to carry around a knife.
Well.
I do remember the fit I pitched and how every head in that store snapped around and stared at me. I remember my mom grabbing my arm and hustling me out of the store, and I definitely recall (and still feel) the good swat on the arse I received when I wouldn’t calm down. My mom was a small woman but she packed a wallop. I didn’t get the knife or any other sort of treat after that performance. In fairness to my mom it should be admitted that I was not a kid you would give a knife to, a fact I lacked awareness of at the time.
Half a century later, days after my fifty-sixth birthday, I found myself staring in the window of the same store in Banff during our trip to the mountains this past weekend. Lo and behold, there was a spinning rack of knives. Of course I went in to have a look and guess what I found? That’s right, a folding pocket knife with my first name on it. And now it’s mine. My own. MY PRECIOUS. Gollum! Gollum!
I guess if you can’t remember your more pleasant older memories you can make pleasing new ones, right? Even better, I may finally be old enough that I can be trusted to use a pocket knife responsibly. Maybe.
Yeah, it’s another cell phone image from my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. **For some reason my name is spelled Séan instead of Seán, the latter being the right way of doing things. The e-acute is incorrect whereas the a-acute is correct. I’m not sure if my mom got that wrong or just thought it looked cooler with the e-acute, but I’m stuck with it now.
