Do you ever wonder why you remember certain things that have been said to you but not others? We like to think we can remember everything we're ever told, everything we've ever thought, and everything we've ever seen, but in reality, our brains don't have the capacity to hold all of that information. Honestly, we probably wouldn't want them to remember that much crap anyway - talk about memory overload.Lucky for me, most of the random sentences I remember people saying to me are about physical things. I was a chubby kid which made me fairly insecure, so it makes sense. Before you ask, my parents loved me and told me I was pretty, that they were proud of me, that I could be whatever I wanted to be... yada, yada yada. It has nothing to do with being one of those kids that was ignored or told they were ugly (those poor sad fugly babies). I was just fat. It makes you a bit crazy in the head. So I remember comments about how I looked, whether they were positive, negative, or just irrelevant.
When I was in fourth grade, my entire class was standing in the hallway near the water fountain outside of our classroom. I was talking to my friends when one of the boys (who today has a receding hairline) told me I shouldn't wear the same outfits all the time because I was wearing the exact same thing that I had worn the day before. For the record, I hadn't. I was wearing one of my favorite outfits, a blue shortall and matching t-shirt combo that wouldn't fly in any decade but the '90s, but I knew I hadn't worn it the day before. Maybe the week before. I'm also pretty sure I made fun of something he said or the way his face just looked stupid when he spoke (I was 9 -- at least I didn't call him a poopyhead). To this day I'm still paranoid that someone will realize that I wore an outfit recently, and I notice when anyone else wears an outfit way too soon after the last time that they wore it. Especially if it's ugly.
In ninth grade, I chopped off my hair. It went from long and curly to short and frizzy. I straightened it constantly in the winter, well before I had a decent straightening iron or knew what hair serum was, and it always looked like a fuzzy triangle of bad highlights and split ends. During basketball practice, I had to wear it in a ponytail, which is tough to do when your hair doesn't actually fit into a hair tie. One of my teammates came up behind me on the court, poked my nearly invisible ponytail, and said, "It looks like a bunny rabbit's tail!" I didn't ask for her opinion, and I didn't want to look like a rabbit, so I didn't cut my hair again until college.
I met my ex-boyfriend's entire extended family over a Fourth of July weekend. I was a month into a blonde dye job, and I was already sick of it. I made a terrible blonde, but bleached it every summer anyway. I mentioned that I might dye it back to brown soon, and his sister asked if it was for my then-not-ex. I shook my head; he laughed. One of those, 'Please, she'd doesn't do what I say just to be the girl who won't do what I say' laughs (those exist, you know). A few months later, we were out with friends when one of the girls said she wanted to chop her hair. I had just chopped my hair off the December before, having not really learned my lesson from high school, and it was way too short. I hated it and was willing it to grow longer as fast as possible, which apparently willed it to just stop growing altogether. My ex said he liked long hair. It wasn't a dig at me. He was just telling our friend to not chop her hair off (or just remember the Carmen Electra posters of his childhood, either or). But I hated my short hair, so it felt like a dig, and I made it personal. I'll guarantee no one else remembers that conversation, including the girl who started it, but I do. I was really mad at my hair and the Super Cuts lady I was cheap enough to trust with it.
I've cut my hair maybe twice in the two years since. It has nothing to do with the ex and everything to do with not wanting to look like a rabbit. Over the last couple of months, my friends keep saying, 'Your hair looks so long!' It's really not -- it's only long if you cut your hair to a misshapen bob and it didn't grow out for a year, so that's what people remember being on your head. Honestly, it's still not long enough for me. I don't know if hair down to my butt would be long enough. While none of these incidents were people making fun of me (well, the kid in fourth grade was, but he'll get his), but I remember them all. And they drive me crazy.
Just goes to show you that your brain doesn't have the capacity for much, but it does have the capacity to hold many of the things you wish it wouldn't and not many of the things you hope it would. I blame Cosmo.
