JAMISON

"I think it's weird that you don't know anybody you knew when you were 12."

"Well, I think it's weird that you don't know anybody you DIDN'T know when you were 12."

That is an actual conversation (yellling match) my husband and I had one time.  Not even really recently, it just has stayed with me.

We currently live about five miles from where my husband has lived his whole life -- except for the three years he lived in California with his brother and sister.  He is the tenth of 11 children and draws much of his identity from that.

My parents moved around a lot -- not like military "a lot," but quite a bit.  I was a toddler in Northwest Missouri, elementary school in Arkansas, high school back in rural Missouri, college as a number at a huge university no one I knew had ever even visited, five years as a career girl in Washington DC, ultimately settling in Kansas City, where my life intersected with my husband's.  And the rest is history.

His story.

It is NOT his story, but it sometimes feels like it.

Anyway, I woke up the other morning haunted by memories of a girl I had known some 30 years ago.  I lived in DC, she lived in Wilmington, Delaware.  We were both 20-something and working for EF Hutton.  We got to be phone friends and then real friends.  And for the life of me, I could NOT come up with her last name.

"I had a friend in 1988 named Amy -- only she spelled it A-I-M-E-E -- and she was Jewish and she was allergic to latex and had problems using condoms," I said to Bobby upon awakening that morning.

He groaned into his pillow.

"I can't remember her last name and it's driving me nuts," I added.  "She painted my bathroom one weekend and her mom rolled her eyes at me one time when I tipped my champagne flute to get more wine and fewer bubbles."

By now, Bobby was sitting upright, staring at me like I was a crazy woman.

"You know all that about somebody, and you can't come up with her name?" he accused.  "That's really important stuff.  How do you DO that?"

And I remembered immediately the infamous "you don't know anybody you knew when you were 12" fight.  And I felt bad.  And I wondered if I was missing something by having such disposable relationships.  Clearly, this is a person with whom I once had a pretty close bond.  I drove to Delaware to go to her father's funeral, for goodness sakes.  She not only painted my bathroom pink, but she sent me a housewarming gift which was a counted cross-stich plaque to hang in that bathroom.

And hang there it did.  For years.  "Paint The Mother Pink," it read.

And now I can't even figure out how to friend her on Facebook?  What does that say about me?

To my credit, I can come up with dozens of people from my murky past whom I could contact out of the clear blue and reconnect with.  Additionally, I have some people I have met in the past five years who I really like, who seem to really like me.  And some who don't.  But maybe that's why my life feels like his story so often.  Because I don't always take proper care of my own story.

And if I don't, no one will.

I'll do better, Aimee Jamison.  Starting now.