The Stories We Tell Ourselves

The other day I took my son and his friends to a local trampoline house, with a stop for frozen yoghurt on the way. I know, we should have had yoghurt after the jumping, but I guess reasoning with three ten-year-olds was not my top priority that day. I did pray though that their young digestive systems were resilient enough to survive an hour of jumping barf-free. My prayers must have been heard because our trampoline adventure ended without an accident. Almost, that is.

As we walked to the car, one of the boys realized that he had forgotten his hoodie inside. He also noticed that he might have left his hat at the yoghurt place. I mentioned that I remembered him walk into the building in a short-sleeve shirt, but he quickly clarified that he carried his hoodie on his shoulder. The other boys confirmed.

When we went inside, he immediately went to a cubicle in which he had put it. It wasn’t there. I asked him to perhaps look in other cubicles, but he was positive he had left his hoodie in that particular one. He remembered vividly how he threw his shoes and socks on top of the hoodie. I insisted he looked around, so the boy lukewarmly traced back his steps, but there was no hoodie to be found in the entire trampoline house. Not even in the "lost and found" box.

“Yep, someone took it. There is no other explanation,” The boy commented after he concluded his search.

I was perplexed but I didn't have a counter- explanation to offer.

“Hopefully, we will have better luck with your hat,” I said as we headed towards the yoghurt shop.

Better luck was an understatement. Both the hat and the hoodie were still piled up on the table at which we were sitting an hour earlier.

As we were driving home, two thoughts formed in my head.

First, isn't it crazy what stories we can tell ourselves just to fill the blanks in our memory?

And how about those blanks? How often could we prevent them? How often could we eliminate them if not for distractions and absent-minded multi-tasking?

Back at home, as I brainstorming how to bridge the concept of mindfulness to a fourth grader, I was up for a surprise.

“I’m putting it here,” the boy said while looking at me and placing his belongings on the couch.

“Great,” I said in disbelief and showed him thumps up.

The boy didn’t need a lecture on mindfulness. He knew how to help himself to remember very well. He paused, he verbalized what he was doing, and he partnered with me.

That’s when the third thought entered my mind.

Isn't it ironic that we have all those tools at our disposal, yet we don’t use them? But that’s a topic for another post.