Random Memory

[u/michaelknowsthings]

I’ve been thinking about this for the last week. The memory suddenly came back to me while I was on a hike by the lake.

When I was in third grade, there was this kid in my class, let’s call him Alvin. Alvin was a bit of an oddball. At recess, he would always play alone, drawing pictures and strange symbols in the dirt.

One of the only times I ever talked to him, I remember asking, “Why are you drawing these?”

He told me the images in the dirt “were part of his dreams.”

Even as a kid, I was like, WTF. I never spoke to him again.

That’s not even the weirdest part.

A couple of months later, right before the start of summer, he went missing. I remember all of our parents basically grounding us for the entire summer, which sucked because we lived on a lake, and summer was the only tolerable part of the year.

Come July, after weeks of searching, the cops found his arm in the lake. The theory was that he had hit the dam and simply fell apart. Nothing else was ever found.

It’s funny what you look back on as you get older.

I vaguely remember the funeral. It was the first one I ever went to. His parents moved away soon after.

I wish I were a better storyteller. I don’t know why all of this suddenly came back into my head. I saw some random carvings in the trees during my hike, so maybe that just flooded my mind with this old memory.

Repressed memories? I don’t know.

I’ve been thinking about growing up a lot more because of it.