Story of my life

Somehow today I've come to be thinking about speeches at birthday parties and weddings. Perhaps because of the movie that was on when I got home from dinner out. At the end of The Wedding Date, Debra Messing gives a singularly uninspired speech. "There's nobody who knows how to love my baby sister like you do. Be good to each other." Or words to that effect, at any rate. It made me tank back to the last time there was any chance of someone making a speech about me. Someone who at least should have known me really well. It was probably my 21st. There have been occasional speechifying moments since then, but nothing nearly as major. I avoided the massive party that usually goes with that birthday. I was the last of my friends to reach the milestone and the thought of combining hard drinking friends with my teetotal family was something I was not prepared to confront. But I was also concerned about the speeches. I was secretly glad that there weren't too many stories to be told about me that could in any way embarrass me. I loved the idea that my life was so private it was known to only me. Of course, my ideas on this have changed now. I think of the lack of friends able to tell stories about me and wonder why I've spent a lifetime keeping people at bay, what I did with my friends that they would have no stories about me. One of my oldest friends was trying to come up with stories about me not that long ago, someone I've known for almost 20 years now, and she came up blank. Or she claimed to. And we've shared a lot in that time. I have countless stories about her. So is it that I haven't lived? That I've spent my entire life on the fringes? That I'm simply not memorable? To tell the truth, if any of these theories are true, I'm horrified. I know my life hasn't exactly been the stuff that dreams are made of. But I don't want it to be so unremarkable that even the people who have shared it with me don't remember my part in it. There is another theory for why people don't tell stories about me, though. And I think I'm going to stick with this one. As CC Bloom tells Hilary in Beaches, "My memory is long, very long." I remember all of their stories, even the ones they would rather I didn't share. And I have a better capacity for alcohol than most of them, which only helps the memories. I still hold out hope that my memory bank of retaliatory ammunition is all that keeps the stories back, not that there are none to tell. Dear god, let that be the reason...