Life Snuck By While I Was Looking?

Do you remember what you did last week? Odds are that you can list a few things that you did, or maybe you had a memorable week and can remember every day in detail. Everybody has those days that you can vividly play back like a tape in your mind. But what about the stretches in between, those days that have evaporated into just a blur? Weeks of those go by, and when Friday comes it usually hits me: Where did my week go? (Those are the best weeks at school, to be sure.)

It still bothers me - not that I think every day is even worth remembering, but the feeling that they just slipped by and are gone for good. Some people can actually remember every day; what the weather was like, whether the local baseball team won or lost. They can remember what people said to them long after those people are dead and gone. These people are also autistic or handicapped in such a way they can't benefit from their unique mental abilities.

Even though most people who remember every day like yesterday are crazy, it still bothers me. I guess it's the same nagging feeling that people relieve by daydreaming about the 'good old days', when inevitably gas was cheaper and Slick Willy was President. It's part of the reason this page exists - not to talk to you but talk to myself, remind me what I was amusing myself with last week and last year. In spite of this, I can't shake that irrational doubt that I've missed something and it's gone for good.

Maybe it's simple biology, flucutations in metabolism or brain-wave signal generators. Why else would my brain be able to tell the time to a quarter-hour even in the middle of the night, but still leave me feeling like the entire week slipped away unnoticed? My brain has learned to drive cars, play complicated games, and even just stand upright as afterthoughts - can't it compensate for leaky days?

There, I've gone and done it - I've called mentally handicapped people crazy. I've also solved nothing and entertained very few in the process. So here is a site from one of those periods I wouldn't mind forgetting, circa May '97. I don't remember much chemistry from that class, but at least I was having fun playing with the windows color themes (see 'E-Mail').