God, do I love moments of unintended poetry.
God, do I hate the ravages of age which, within minutes, can scatter those moments to the far edges of memory. Then you have to mount a whole frigging safari to recover them…
The Missus and I were on the way home from work yesterday. (We don’t work at the same place, but we do carpool. Which gives us a chance to talk, to share moments of drama and outrage from the past eight hours, to be present when the other bursts into song or, yes, poetry.)
Her boss and his wife are doing us a favor which, if they can manage it, will be done ideally sometime the next 24 hours. I hadn’t heard if it was still “on,” though, so I asked TM if she knew what the status was Actually, she said, actually, no I haven’t. She had me punch her office’s phone number into her cell phone (she was driving) so she could briefly remind her boss about it. It took 10 seconds, if that.
But the end of the conversation cracked me up. Her half of it went something like, “Uh-huh… Okay. Thanks. Just remind me in the morning, in case I forget to ask.” And then she hung up.
She saw me laughing. “What?”
“Oh, you know. Suddenly I just thought of a saying.” Which was:
Don’t forget to tell me
’cause I might forget to ask.
Er, at least we think that’s what it was. Because, inevitably, when I was getting ready for bed, neither of us could recall the exact wording. I sort of liked the sound of “Don’t forget to remind me…” because the injection of that different word sort of sharpened the irony. Or something like that. (Who knows? I’ve already forgotten the rationale for mis-remembering.) It was The Missus herself who finally narrowed it down to the above, which — if not exactly what I’d said, captures the spirit and the, uh, rhythm. It scans, y’know?
We talked briefly, back when I’d first said it (whatever it was), of actually getting it printed up, à la CafePress, on a T-shirt. Or a bumper sticker. I forget which.
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