David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

Memory Lane is seductive when
I get lost in ‘might-have-beens’

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You have gotten much thinner
You’re lookin’ like a shadow
It’s from dwelling on the might-have-beens
Living in a time-warp
To whom am I speaking? Some ghost from the past?
While you think about old glories
You’re fading real fast
— “Memory Lane,” Daniel Amos (Doppelgänger, 1983)

I’ve fallen down that rabbit hole called Memory Lane tonight. To be more honest, though, I didn’t really fall in here, as though I had no control over things. No, I jumped in with both feet — and now I can’t seem to find my way out.

It started with a woman, but that’s not really unusual, because these trips frequently start with a woman. They start with a faint memory that turns into a burning need to relive something warm and delightful.

And from there, I slide into the warmth and security of love.

Of being loved. Of losing love.

And then to the quagmire of what might have been — the bittersweet longing that’s equal parts hope and love and despair and emptiness.

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My need to win isn’t pretty, but it’s key to who I’ve always been

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When it came to the desire to win, I could be obnoxious when I was a child. It’s not that I rubbed it in when I won or was a bad loser when I lost. It’s simply that I was very, very intense when I was competing — no matter how small the stakes were.

When I was in the fifth grade, we had a running team competition in a math class. We had four teams and each team had a captain. Three fourths of the class seemed to be divided randomly, but one of the teams had all the worst students in the room — and I was their captain.

For months, we would have one period each week when the teams worked together. The team captains were expected to take the lead. I was furious at being saddled with the weakest students in class, but I pushed and pushed them during those work sessions. I didn’t care whether they said they didn’t understand the work. I was going to make them understand. I wanted to win.

After several months of practice and then regular matches against each other, my team was the only one that never lost a match. The worst students — those on my team — finally understood their worst subject, because I refused to let us lose. I forced them to learn. Toward the end of the year, the teacher privately confessed to me that she did it on purpose — because she knew I was competitive enough to force my peers to learn.

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Modern life doesn’t have to be as complicated as we try to make it

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I haven’t been able to stop looking at this picture for the past couple of days.

A woman in suburban New Jersey posted it on social media Friday evening. She said a pregnant deer had come to her back yard a few hours before and given birth to two fawns. The new mother appears to be exhausted, but she’s cleaning her babies as they start learning about their world.

Sunday afternoon, I was in a Walmart checkout line behind a tall blonde woman with one of the tiniest babies I’ve ever seen. The baby girl was strapped into a sling that kept her tightly attached to her mother’s body.

The little girl was only 2 weeks old, but she already seemed to be aware of my presence right next to her. Her big blue eyes seemed to be absorbing everything around her as they stared up at me.

As I walked out of the store, I made the connection between the deer and the new mother in the store. In both cases, I felt as though I was seeing a miracle.

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