Things stick in our heads. I don’t mean the things we TRY to remember. A spouses’ birthday, the PIN for my bank card, our Social Security number or driver’s license number. Those are things we have to remember, or used to before we had all that on our phones. But no, I am talking about those things we remember for no reason — maybe things we don’t even want to remember – yet we do. Why? Why, out of all the information that is passed before me in an hour, in days, weeks, months, years, decades, why do some things stick in memory, and others (many I want to remember) are as elusive as (here’s another one) “the bright elusive butterfly of love.”
So today is the day I think of this each year, all because:
“It was the third of June, another sleepy dusty delta day. I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was bailing hay. And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat. Momma hollered at the back door y’all remember to wipe your feet. And then she said, I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge. Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Curse you, Bobbie Gentry, and your Ode to Billy Joe!
It occurs to me... 