Random Memories

I've had some odd moments over the past couple of days. I'd love to know what a psychologist could make of it all. Mostly, I've just been experiencing the strangest flashbacks. No, I don't mean that I suddenly find myself standing in a parking lot with a Viking helmet on my head (don't ask). I just mean that random memories flitter through my mind at the oddest times. Like I'll be carrying a box up into the attic and I'll suddenly start thinking about a parking lot at a small truck stop in Phoenix. Or I'll be making a sandwich and I'll think about sitting in a dock at a customer in Los Angeles. Or I'll be walking down the hallway, thinking about the truck stop in Fargo where I once bought the chocolate covered potato chips. They aren't random memories about people or events, but places. Like the Petro in Amarillo. The long grade down Cabbage Patch. The parking lot of some little truck stop in Colorado. Or the outhouses on top of Vale Pass.

I haven't been thinking about these places so much as I've been wondering why I've been thinking about these places so much. Do I miss them? Am I that sick, that I miss the road, and I want to see these places again? Or do these memories just represent moments and places that I cherish? Maybe it's not so much that I want to go back there, but that I don't want to forget that I was there. I dunno. It's all so random. Is that how I'm going to spend the rest of my days? Sitting in the bleachers watching a Bucs game, and thinking of Montana? Having dinner in a restaurant with friends, and seeing lonely stretches of Oklahoma highways in my head?