Chapter 3

Memory has several important relationships with inteligence.

Many of these are obvious, several are not. There tends to be an apparent relationship between intelligence and memory. It is not that smart people have better memory, but that people with good memory are smarter. One of the reasons I appear intelligent is my exceptional memory. I remember what is on page 324 of every book I have ever read. I remember over fifty proofs of the Pythagorean theorem. I remember the first hundred digits of Pi. I remember many useful things. I also remember many things I would like to forget, like the time my mother ... never mind, you really don't want to remember that. There is only one thing I don't remember and that is what happened during those two weeks, and I would really like to know how I met Alecia and Julie. I would like to remember Emily and Beth, and Alice from Texas.

As I sat at a round table at a restraunt in a small town bracketed by Alecia and Julie and across from Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, I was quickly developing a deeper appreciation for the works of Esther. They were much more logical than my Life. I decided not to look at the menu. Five girlfriends was not an option that I had thought was available. I decided that the options not on the menu were more interesting. I wanted the mothers of my children to live with me and I wanted a little of everything, so when the manager came to take our order (for fear of losing another waitress) and no one had yet looked at the menus, I ordered an assortment of house specials served family style for the table, with chocolate cake as an appetizer. Mrs. Thompson glared at me, Mr Thompson shrugged and said that sounded fine, and Julie said that she didn't know that you could do that, so I said, "Julie, my dear, the menu tells us what the chef thinks he can do, not what he can do. A bad chef can't do what is on the menu, but a good chef can do so much more. When you order something not on the menu, you give him the opportunity to shine.

The Faces around the table assured me that I had not yet made a misstep amongst the minefields through which we were frolicking, but Mrs. Thompson was readying the hand grenades, and she thought she had a good one when she lobbed out with "So Julie, what do your parents think of your boyfriend?"

Pore Julie broke into tears stuck her face into my sholder and sobbed, "They don't believe me. They say I'm going to hell."

Now as I was begining to detest Mrs. Thompson and she hurt the feelings of a lady who had kissed me and pressed her wonderful bra-covered tits into my chest, (and apparently much more, ) I felt no restraint when I glared across the table and calmly said, "Since you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I then turned to the crying girl, pulled her into my lap and said "Relax, darling lady, tell me your troubles and you will soon see that a burden shared is a burden lessened."

This earned me a timid smile and softly spoken account that riveted me to my seat. "It was a month after we had gotten back from camp when my mother walked in on me trying on sexy underwear. As you know, Alecia and I have been best friends since first grade, when we lived just a couple blocks apart and are almost always together, anyway, the day before Alli and I had gone shopping the day before with Emily and we had all gotten pretty underthings to wear for you including some stuff from the back room at Megen's Bridal and Dress and Alli and I were in my room trying stuff on, and my mother walked in without knocking and saw Alli wearing crotchless panties and a nightie and me in the bra that mostly isn't sliding my panties off before putting on ... and ... and ... she..." and her voice faded out in sobs.

"She screamed, 'You stupid bitches have been spending two much time with that dammed lesbian' and kicked me out, told me to never come back and called my mother." Alicia continued through her own tears.

"And she tore up my scholarship to CSU. She said that I'm going to Bob Jones." Now Bob Jones University has a well deserved reputation for academic excellence and a equally well deserved reputation for being a terrible place for homosexuals and other liberals of any stripe, but my main objection was Greeley is just a short drive from the family farm, but Bob Jones is on the east coast and doesn't offer postgraduate engineering classes to keep me amused.

"You can relax about the scholarship," I said, "She only tore up the paper, the scholarship is a promise, and promises are written on the heart of the giver or at least in this case their hard drive. As you know people pay me to solve problems, and some problems are simple to solve, but some cannot be solved at all. Now It should be fairly simple to convince your parents that I am your fiancée and that you are not lesbian but I fear that your relationship with your mother will never be the same, and there is nothing I can do to fix that but I will always hold you when you cry." This earned me a kiss that left me so weak kneed that if I had not been sitting down someone would have gotten hurt. I turned to Alecia and asked, "Would you check on my socks, I think she just Knocked them off?" This however only got me a couple smacks and smiles.