Conversation with Egg and an intern (the newly biked one) this morning. Egg had just seen "The Philadelphia Story" for the first time. Much enthusing on both our parts plus reenactment for the ignorant intern was necessary. [Logically, it should be "were," but that sounds wrong. Have I been corrupted?] Through Jimmy Stewart, we got to "Airport '77" and other cheesy crap to watch in the '70s, so "The Donny and Marie Show" was but a short leap--unlike the conversation, which was a long gossipy reminiscence on a Monday morning. The intern (who is Mormon) said that besides polygyny, the Osmonds were the worst thing for the LDS' reputation. Here I refrained from commenting that harassing people on their doorsteps probably doesn't help either but instead observed that I didn't remember any Mormonism in the show particularly. My first exposure to the religion was in the Great Brain books. "I remember those!" exclaimed Egg. Of course she does: we're only a year apart, whereas most of our childhood television was lost on the intern, a decade younger.
So I explained the books to the intern (much as Egg and I had, in tandem, quite a while earlier, explained "The Philadelphia Story"), how in the little town of Adenville, Utah, the preponderance of Mormons necessitated each boy (Sweyn, Tom the Brain, and John the narrator) to be able to beat up those Mormons in his own age group. And the Brain's swindling and crime-solving. Egg exclaimed at how much I remember, and the intern has--big surprise--also noticed it. She said something about "how much you remember, when I'm ready to go on to the next thing."
I cracked right the hell up. That is such a perfect description of me. I laughed and laughed and laughed and teared up with laughter and laughed in that unstoppable, face-aching way, and she was laughing too and insisting she hadn't meant it like that. I knew that she didn't mean it maliciously, but the subconsciously rendered, absolutely perfect description of what it's like to be around me, reduced me to hysterics.
Then the intern asked me how I can keep all of that in my head, that he would go insane with so much going on. I told him I don't know the capital of Angola, which more important to daily life [whereupon I shut up, continuing in my head, "than the Fitzgerald boys' middle name (which is Dennis)," but I didn't want to prove his point too much, did I?]