I just know I’m forgetting someone

There is one thing I find relatable about people at award shows collecting accolades and that is the horrified stumbling through halting speeches about how they’re sure they’re forgetting someone.

Public Service Announcement: we’re all forgetting someone.

Who gave you your first full set of colour pencils? Do you remember the feeling of colouring in? Do you remember the smell of the wood? Did that first set of pencils, forever maybe, associate a colour with a feeling? Do you feel like the same you now that you were then? The impact that person had on you! Just think! They deserve, surely, heartfelt thanks.

Except maybe pencils bring you nothing. Maybe, instead, it’s the feeling of flying through space, of running, of swimming. Maybe you soar. You fly. You best your last effort. Your genetic makeup propels you through the universe, an army of ancestors roaring within you, strong and capable, physically adept and determined.

Or maybe you curl on the couch. It’s daydreaming you’re good at, perhaps. Staring into an open fire while somebody tells you a story. Maybe the person strokes your hair and asks nothing of you but to listen, perhaps to sleep. Who taught you tenderness? Who was kind?

Who protected you?

Who defended you?

Who made you lose yourself in a laugh?

Who helped you understand you were wrong?

Who saw you struggling and helped you? Made the microphone work when you were fumbling or scooped you out of a wave in the surf when you were too small to go under?   

When I was a kid people made each other mix-tapes. Did someone make you a mix tape? A CD? A playlist? Who thought of you and selected the right combination of musical notes, of lyrics, of vibe, to match? Who listened and imagined you listening? Who sent you a song title that had a meaning only two people in the universe understood? Whose hand grabbed yours when the song played in public?

Do you remember who taught you to love your favourite thing? Of course you do. Imagine being that person for someone else. Imagine teaching someone to love something for their whole life forever. Imagine that becoming part of who they are.

There was a time, when I was about sixteen, when I briefly enjoyed the challenge of overcoming and then the joy of understanding the thing that was most terrifying to me. I was, and it still shocks me now, briefly confident studying maths. How did this gobsmacking happenstance occur? Well you see there was a teacher, a man called Mr A (although we called him Mr A Plus because he was the more beloved of the two teachers who went by the name Mr A and a very big sorry to Mr A Minus if he’s reading this but you DID make us do laps of the oval with a glee bordering on sadistic). Mr A Plus taught me maths so that I didn’t feel tricked by it. I felt capable of having a go at it. I never loved it. But I was at least not suffering through it on the brink of hot, shameful tears. Mr A Plus was never my actual teacher. He just had me for a a few classes and helped me once at lunch time. As a result, I never made a speech for the prize I never received for the maths I never did ever again after that year but if I did I would have thanked Mr A Plus. He didn’t just teach me how to do better in a subject I dreaded at school. He taught me to pause and to take a deep breath and think, when all evidence indicates there is no hope: I can probably figure this out. I never thanked Mr. A for that. I knew I was forgetting someone.

Maybe thanks don’t need to be on a podium. It’s enough to fondly remind yourself of the barista from years back who remembered your name when you didn’t know anybody in your new scary job. What’s the barista doing now? Thanks to the barista!

And maybe it is enough that when patting a dog at the post office, part of you is sending silent thanks to the childhood pet who sighed with such contentment on your lap that you knew you could be someone’s favourite.

Thank you, too, for the mix tapes you’ve made and the pets you’ve loved. Let’s hope I didn’t forget anyone.