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On my last day of elementary school, I picked a blade of grass from the field and when I got home I carefully tucked it away in an envelope. It had suddenly dawned on me that this was my last day of school and I'd probably want something to remember the day by. Since my mom was picking me up in a few minutes, a piece of grass was the best I could do.
 

This memory bothers me. I find it disturbing for no good reason. It's a scab that I cannot help but pick at and tease apart in order to expose the raw goo underneath.
 

I hadn't been nostalgic, I had been anticipating nostalgia. Although finishing elementary school didn't matter very much to me, I had shrugged and grabbed at the blade of grass because "who knows, I may want some reminder." Is this the same instinct that motivates us to buy overpriced souvenirs at Disneyland™? I ask this to draw a deliberate parallel between my thought process at the close of fifth grade and the bovine consumer tendency towards kitsch. ^[1] I certainly hope I can dismiss this moment as being a minor example of taught materialism. ^[2] Whereas Disney gear is emblazoned with cute logos that validation-stamp a vacation, this blade of grass is staggering in its meaninglessness. What scares me is the possibility that maybe I wanted to care about what everyone told me was a significant event and found that I couldn't care. Staring at the void of emotion, I mechanically grabbed at the first thing I came across, literally packed it into a letter and figuratively mailed it to my future self to deal with. It would be comforting to pretend that I was feeling the emotions so strongly that I was paralyzed into feeling nothing, but that's not how it was.
 

A similar incident of deferring unfelt emotions happened a few months later when our cat died. Tessie was a cantankerous half-Siamese who spent her waking hours perfecting a mind-splitting howl. My parents accidentally ran over her on the driveway. I can still recall her last yowl, suddenly loud and sharp and just as suddenly quiet. She died later that night when the vet put her to sleep. When my parents brought her body home I was morbidly fascinated by how un-catlike the corpse was, robbed of warmth and sleek relaxation. I touched her back with my finger and didn't feel any emotion beyond vague creepiness. I felt really bad that I didn't feel bad, and I guess the guilt brought tears to my eyes.
 

Later that night I overheard my mom talking on the phone to my grandma.
 

"Oh, everyone's dealing with her death OK, I guess. I think that Charles is pretty upset though, poor guy."
 

I slunk out of the room feeling awful.
 

Finishing school, a blade of grass, the death of a pet, mistaken tears – I'm not sure what it means, I'm not sure what to make of it. These small moments are meaningfully related but the layered ironies and possible interpretations make it all but impossible to draw any conclusion. I do the best I can and pick at the memories to expose any clue of emotion or coldness that would hint at meaning, but I do so with vague dread that I will either uncover a massive debt of deferred moments that will leave me emotionally bankrupt, or I'll undermine other memories and reduce them to instances of me pretending to feel.
 

Mind you, I realize that this is all pretty small stuff. But somehow, it's the small things that bug me the most.
 

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