STEPH DEROSA: TOILET TALES >>>

My cousin, who is also one of my favorite people in the entire world, recently gave birth to the most beautiful baby boy I’ve ever seen. His name is Gianni DeRosa, and I find myself making up excuses to see him, hold him and kiss him on a daily basis. In order to keep my cousin from slapping a restraining order on me, I’ve settled for weekly lunches with my new little baby. Uh, I mean her new little baby.

Last week cousin Angie suggested lunch at Duke’s Chowder House. Seeing as how we’d both never tried it, and it was destined to be a beautiful day on the waterfront, I happily obliged.

The service was fantastic, the atmosphere was comforting, and seeing Gianni again made everything perfect. I had the grilled salmon with blueberries and goat cheese, which was very yummy, but eventually I had to head to the potty to relieve my bladder.

I passed the long line of retirees and blue-hairs waiting for a table, feeling lucky we had snagged a spot when we did. Entering the bathroom I felt as though as cool as it was with the dark colors and black accents, it didn’t quite stick with the theme of being all “Duke’s” like the rest of the restaurant was. It was still the perfect place for me to pee, don’t get me wrong. I even waded through the pack of AARP members to get to a stall without breaking a single person’s hip.

I began to wonder if these senior citizens remembered a lot of their lives. If they did, what moments stuck out to them? Did the bad memories eventually fade away? Was it hard to remember prom? Your first kiss? At what point do you start forgetting stuff that happened to you?

Before you get all bent out of shape and call me a total heartless bitch for picking on the older folk, let me let you in on a secret: I’m scared I have a memory problem.

I was watching a show about a group of people at their 20th high school reunion the other night. They were letting people enter the area one by one, making a grand entrance. These people hadn’t seen each other in 20 years, some of them never even hung out with each other in high school, yet they all remembered who each person was as they walked in. “Hey! Look! There’s Robbie Smith!” they would shout. If I were there, I would’ve been saying, “Who the fuck is that walking in right now?”

I tried to close my eyes and grasp a mental picture of the first couple of names I could cluster up in my head from high school. Not only could I not remember their faces, but also I could think of only a handful of names. Quickly I tried to test myself again. I tried to think of five teachers from high school. I could remember two. And it was the two I had for drill team, so I had them for all four years. That was kinda cheating for my brain. This sucked. College? Don’t remember a single professor. I remember my roommate I had one year; that was it. Shit. I’m stupid, aren’t I?

Why do some memories stay with me, and others take a permanent vacation? I rushed back to my table to confide my newfound memory loss to my cousin. She laughed in my face and burped little Gianni as she reminded me of something very important: music is my key to opening up memories. She wasn’t shocked I hadn’t remembered that I told her that a long time ago. It’s true: certain songs open the doors to my thoughts, others justify my feelings, and some give me closure to my worries. But all of them hold some sort of treadmill that will jog a memory at any given time.

She then comforted me in the fact that I will always remember the important things. She asked me a few questions about Annalese being a baby, and certain milestones she passed. I remembered them all. It seems as though after meeting my husband, nothing before that mattered. And especially after having my daughter, no other memory was ever as important.

I feel confident that I’m not alone in this thought process. I know a few of you who will agree with me on the music part of the memory process and a lot of you who will agree on the “new person” in your life memory process. Whichever one it is, all I have to say is:

Screw all of you that said I forgot things ’cause I was old. My cousin will beat you up. Assholes.