Officially Technological

When I taught at Brown Mackie College, I always tried to prove to the students that if they’re interested and passionate in their studies they would remember better. To prove this I would pick out a person in the class and say, “What were you wearing last Wednesday?” Without fail, they could never remember. Then I would say, “What were you wearing when you got your first kiss?” And again, without fail, they would remember. I would get answers like, “I was wearing a blue dress with lace around the sleeves, and I had my hair in a sideways pony tail, and my lucky bracelet and these really cool electric blue hoop earrings…” And the whole class would laugh, and I would say something about how when you engage your emotions, it makes it more memorable. So, if you’ve attached something important (in this case – your first kiss) to something unimportant (what you were wearing), you’ll remember it longer.

I mention this because yesterday my 7-year-old nephew received his first kiss. It was at school and a little girl called him over and when he went over to see what she wanted, she leaned over and kissed him. The action itself was so ordinary (in a cute kid sort of way), but there is so much more to the story.

As an aside, my dad has been a little tense about the middle finger on his right hand. He had gotten something stuck in it (like wire), and it caused a raging infection that landed him in the hospital for several days. Since getting out of the hospital, it’s been pretty touch-and-go, and yesterday he found out that it looks like the infection has now spread to the bone. Not the news anyone was hoping to hear, and since he narrowly escaped the removal of the finger before, everyone is now concerned that it will have to be amputated this time. As you can imagine, this has been pretty stressful. So, when they got home last night, and found that they had three messages from Clark to call him back, they were more than happy to have an excuse not to think about it for a while.

So, they called Clark, who was very anxiously waiting to tell them the news of his love-life. After gushing all the details; my dad was feeling a little more cheerful. So, when they said good-bye, my dad jokingly said, “Well, sleep tight; don’t let the love-bug bite.”

“The what??”

“The love-bug.”

“Hey! I bet that’s why Gracie kissed me! I’m wearing my love-bug underpants that grandma gave me for Valentine’s Day!”

So, I guess it’s good to know that when Clark gets to college and an instructor asks him what he was wearing when he had his first kiss, that he’ll have an interesting answer. Because, there’s absolutely no way he’ll ever forget that. It’s also makes me chuckle to think of an adult saying in front of class of his peers, “I was wearing love-bug underpants!”