A Boy Named Goo, Joe

"So tell me about your childhood." He wasn't being serious. It was just a winking sort of joke, one we had established long ago, back when we went through the program together. Something about how we had already learned too much, discussed it too often, started to make connections back to that time that weren't actually there, but provided comfort. Something like that, I don't know, it's tough to explain if you weren't there. I took a sip of my coffee.

"But did you ever actually think about..." I started, and he goes, "Oh lord, here we go." "No! For real. Did you ever think about we have very few actual memories from before the age of like twelve?" It was something I had been considering on my now daily walks through the dirt roads off the parkway. I knew a lot of "facts" about my childhood but most of those were still portraits. "And there's the possibility that those portraits are actually based on pictures you've seen, not real memories." "Exactly! See, you get it."

He was still looking skeptical as he took a puff of his cigarette. He still held his cigs pinched between thumb and index finger, ghost muscle memory from harder substances in the deep recesses of the past. "The only problem with this theory is that it's putting too much importance on the idea of 'childhood'"—he made air quotes here, but had to use middle and ring fingers on the right hand due to the cigarette—"whereas maybe childhood isn't any different at all. Maybe there is a constant churn of memories made and then lost over a lifetime. Maybe you only remember your 20s vividly because it was ten years ago, and in another ten you'll forget all about 'em."

I nodded and took another sip of the coffee. Too hot still. "Okay, true, but I have a new theory." "Oh yeah? Please, do tell," he said, not completely unsarcastically. "I was thinking about it as I listened to that old Goo Goo Dolls album." Now he was choking on his smoke. "That old thing? Damn, I haven't listened to that since I was little." "Exactly my point!"

And I told him about the deep cut on A Boy Named Goo, called "Impersonality." How there's a lyric on there that goes "When I was three feet tall..." and what follows is an impeccably curated collection of memories from a childhood, sharp details about otherwise banal scenes from decades ago. "And I started to wonder if maybe there was something unique about my childhood that meant that I didn't have these sorts of memories, that I only remembered broad sketches of moments in time."

"But you just agreed with me when I said that I listened to Goo Goo Dolls in my youth. You remember hearing 'Name,' right?" "Yeah..." I paused, curious. And then continued, "I do, but even then, I couldn't really tell you anything specific. I usually default to saying something like 'we used to listen to this song in the minivan on the way to the swim club' or some shit like that. Those aren't actual memories though. Just assumptions, sanded down over years and years."

The circular table we were sitting at was a little wobbly. There was a problem with how the surface connected to the leg, so it wasn't even a matter of putting a pack of matches under the leg to even it out or whatever. "So that line about the height." "What about it?" His coffee spilled slightly when he sat up and bumped the table. "These are memories from when he was younger... and also shorter." He chuckled at that one, and I grabbed the table to make sure my coffee didn't slosh around. "Yeah, you would know, huh? Tall motherfucker."

I pointed at him excitedly and almost yelled, "Yes! Exactly! I am tall now, and I was short back then. Perhaps not compared to my peers, but compared to the adults in my life. I was shorter than them. I was shorter than most people that I would pass by in the street. I was short when Goo Goo Dolls were an important rock band. And now I'm not." Through a puff of smoke I could tell he was nonplussed: "So?" "So what I'm saying is that my brain deleted a lot of my memories from my childhood because of the perspective shift. I've lived so much of my life as a relatively tall person that my brain literally cannot handle distant memories from any time during which that was not the case. They don't compute, and are thus deleted."

The cigarette is down to the stub, but he takes one last puff before answering. He speaks in a slow, measured way. I've known him long enough to know that this means he's actually taking it seriously, which doesn't happen often. "All this from the fucking Goo Goo Dolls, huh?" I nod, and then say, "Yeah. And I think the warm feelings I get from music like this comes from some deep part of myself that knows something is missing, but can't quite articulate it. Something like 'Long Way Down' feels like I found an empty chest in the corner of my attic and I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what was in there, but still glad that it's there, ready to be filled once again."

A long, excruciating pause from him, and then: "I could go for a drink right now."

"Me too."

"A real drink."

"I know what you meant."

Silence for a bit. Not uncomfortable, just... quiet.

I finally speak up. "It's funny, I thought I was going a little crazy this week, listening to this fucking album. There were a few deep cuts that sounded like there was a completely different singer singing them. Felt like Rzeznik was speeding up his pitch or something." And then I interrupted myself: "Hey, actually, do you mind if I have a cigarette?" "I thought you quit?" "I did, that's why it's okay if I have a cigarette."

He handed one over from his perilously empty pack. "Took me till like yesterday to just go on Wikipedia and figure out that the songs in question were just Robby Takac taking lead vocals." Long drag. "I spent the whole fucking week thinking that the decades in between had completely severed my understanding of reality vis-à-vis Goo Goo Dolls, that the big hits sounded different because of their presence in the dark corners of my mind and the deep cuts sounded like Superchunk because they were new to me, here in my 30s." An even longer drag. God, it's been forever.

He's slightly shaking his head as he says, "Heh, yeah, the brain is a funny thing, man. You never fucking know." I nod my head and agree. "How's that cig?" I tell him it's fine. It's a half-truth. "Well good, I'm almost out, and I thought you quit." I sort of shrug, and that's it. He looks at his watch. I look at mine. We're at the point where we both know our time here is ended but we're each waiting for the other to say it. I pull the trigger: "Alrighty, well..." And I leave it at that. He stands up abruptly, the table shifting all the way to the side now, and I just barely save the coffee from spilling. "Yeah, I, uh, yeah, man. It was good to see you." "You too" I say as I stand up as well. He makes a low whistling sound. "As tall as always." I chuckle. "Yeah, maybe if I stay this height for a while, I'll remember this meeting forever."

Another soft laugh, and then he was gone. I sat back down and finished my coffee, thinking some more about Goo Goo Dolls and everything I had lost. I wasn't being serious about remembering this ultimately insignificant meet-up at a random coffee shop for the rest of my life... but I still wondered if I would. Would it be like "Name," a living and breathing document within my mind? Would it be like "Slave Girl," a memory that makes me uncomfortable and is pushed deep down so as to forget it on purpose? Or would it be like "Iris," a memory that shifts over time, twists into something that I know is false, including its non-placement on the album that I spent so much time listening to? I don't know. Hard to say so soon after the fact.

I finished my cigarette. My last cigarette. Tossed it in his leftover coffee and heard the soft, brief ssssss of its extinguishing. It suddenly occurred to me that it had nothing to do with height. It was the writing. You write about something and you preserve it and you can trick yourself that you remember, even if you're only remembering what you wrote and not the thing itself. I tilted the paper cup all the way up to get the last dregs, and started to make my way toward the door. Before the bell above the door rang, I committed to writing about this, the thing that just happened, knowing that it would be nice to remember in the future, and that I would need to write about it to grant it immortality.

And I would write about A Boy Named Goo this time too, because I didn't want to forget it again. No longer will I approach the album and feel something and not know where it came from. I feel warm and it comes from this. I feel healed and it's by these songs. I am satisfied and that's because of this band.

I walked out the door into the summer heat and my mind moved elsewhere.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5