Thursday 13: Surreal Moments

Have you ever had those moments when all you can say is, huh? Or you do a double-take to see if you saw what you just thought you saw? I devote this Thursday 13 to those moment in my life.

1. It is my first memory. And most of that is blurred by now. I was 3. Spending time over my maternal grandparents' house. As music went, I knew of only one musical group. The Fab Four was indellibly marked in my brain from before I came out of the womb. Well, on December 8, 1980 I called my Uncle Mark and said, 'I'm sorry about John Lemon.'
2. After the iron had hit my skull a quarter inch from my temple, my neighbor exclaimed, 'You have a hole in your head!' She was right.
3. In a kitchen with exceptionally ugly powder blue floral wallpaper, my parents sat us down for dinner. A rarity. 'We're getting divorced.'
4. I stepped onto the stage and walked to the microphone. The moderator said the word. I repeated it. 'S-E-C-R-A-T-A-R-Y'. 'I'm sorry, that is wrong.' That moment before I broke into tears.
5. I sat on the lower bunk in our apartment after having just moved from a significantly larger house. I realized I'd never see Clancy again. Clancy was the dog...
   
6. Playing at Doolittle Park with a friend and my brother, we ran up a shallow embankment. My brother fell, but it seemed no different than any other time he'd fallen. So I laughed at him. Until I realized that his arm was broken. Then I ran home to get my mother.
   
7. I tried to grab for his jersey as he flitted past me. It felt as though I barely grazed him. I fell. When I went to get up, one of my teammates exclaimed, 'Dude, your finger isn't supposed to point that way.' My right ring finger had dislocated at the second knuckle and was resting over my middle and index fingers.
8. I hit the telephone pole hard trying to turn around. In that lively game of Suicide all those years ago. I got out of the car, thinking the old man would kill me. There wasn't a scratch.
9. I handed her the diamond and ruby ring. 'Will you marry me?' Later, I tried to ask her father for his daughter's hand in marriage. I failed miserably. Mostly because he didn't speak English and my Spanish was questionable at best.
10. I stepped out of my room at the seminary with no place in particular to go. Dan Kennedy walked by and said, 'A plane just hit the World Trade Center.' I moved to the common room just in time to see the second plane hit.
11. I called Joseph from the corner of 8th and Olive and asked him where George, Washington was. He didn't get it.
    
12. I called a few of my friends who thought I had gone AWOL. 'Hi [insert name here] I'm in Seattle.'
13. I walked past the big screen television in the lobby today and saw the word 'Dead'. I thought it was another story about Farrah. Then, I saw the 'Michael Jackson' and thought, wha?