Earlier today Mr. Smile Hon posted this picture on Facebook:
This picture freaks me out.
Instantly, I was reminded of a moment from high school. I was in a car with members of the calling circle, driving some one home at night. We were driving down a street of split level houses with large windows, when we passed a house with a window open to a wall of floor to ceiling shelves of heads. They may have been wig displays, or mannequin heads, maybe even doll heads, something like that, but there were hundreds of them. We all noticed it at exactly the same moment, and simultaneously, all four of us yelled, “HEADS!”
It was a funny moment, but what has me marveling is that I hadn’t thought of it since it happened -probably 1991 or so- and had something not reminded me, it may have been buried there forever, still alive somewhere deep in the folds and creases of my brain, little synapses just sitting there unnoticed, waiting to be sparked into consciousness.
I wonder how much is there in my head, in anyone’s head for that matter, waiting to be inspired back into awareness. This is just a goofy little story out of my past, but I have been smiling about it over the course of the day. It is a gift to get that moment, that story, back. It probably would be fun to spend an evening entertaining myself with all the things I thought I had forgotten, but now that I think of it, this is why we make new friends. As we get to know each other, those long winding conversations about our lives draw us back into ourselves. I love those conversations during which the anecdotes bounce back and forth off of each other, and whatever it is that we have in common, whatever recognition of ourselves we have found in the other person turns the conversation into a series of “that reminds me, that reminds me, that reminds me…” and we come back to what has made us who we are now.
