it's funny, the way we can linger in someone's memory.
we know the ways people linger in ours, of course. we can feel them. we know we listen to this band because of someone we met in college, because of a drive we took late one night; we know we like a certain dish because we had it states away, on a trip. we remember a dress we had in preschool gifted to us by a classmate. we remember the first time we learned about batman, or played nba jam, or learned that you could do tricks on a trampoline. or the smell of someone's house that has too many cats. even maybe someone we never met. we can think of them when looking at a landscape, because it reminds you of a photo they sent you once of the area near their house, in another country.
my friend, a dear friend but someone i don't talk to often anymore, texted me out of the blue to say he was thinking of me because he'd invented a malaphor at work. that he said to someone they have bigger fish to put before the horse. and... what that makes me think of is my grandmother. whom i never met, but i would hear from my mom the way she said things like "you buttered your bread, now lay in it." instead of "you buttered your bread, now eat it" or "you made your bed, now lay in it."
and so not only do phrases like that make me think of someone i never knew, but apparently at one point in time i told that to this friend of mine. i have no recollection of doing so, but now phrases like that make him think of me.
i wonder what other parts of me exist in the consciousness of other people.
