June 10th, 25 years ago, I got dumped by my then girlfriend.<\/p>\n
It was a trau\u00admat\u00adic time for me, so much so that I found out later that my par\u00adents had me on sui\u00adcide watch. Not that that was some\u00adthing that was on my mind. But I know that I became moody, I did after all go five days without sleep. (Look\u00ading back, I\u2019m sure I did sleep some!) I just lay in my bed listen\u00ading to sad songs while wear\u00ading a large pair of Headphones.
\nThe girl at the time, let\u2019s call her Y, was\u00adn\u2019t my first girl\u00adfriend, that would have been Vic\u00adtor\u00adia Mel\u00adlor. She was\u00adn\u2019t the first girl i kissed, that would have been Sarah Wright. She was\u00adn\u2019t the first girl who dumped me, they all dumped me. She was\u00adn\u2019t even my first teen\u00adage girl\u00adfriend, that would have been Tina Ker\u00adshaw. She was how\u00adever, the first girl whom I loved. Now I use the term love loosely. It was\u00adn\u2019t love like they way I love my chil\u00addren, it was\u00adn\u2019t love like they way I love my fam\u00adily, it was\u00adn\u2019t love like the way I love my wife, but it was the love of a 15 year old boy, who was just start\u00ading to form the concept of love. She was the girl I would pine over, over the next few years, the one who got away, the girl I would start writ\u00ading bad poetry about. Really bad poetry!<\/p>\n
We had\u00adn\u2019t been dat\u00ading that long, just a few months, and in fact she had been on hol\u00adi\u00adday for the pre\u00advi\u00adous few weeks, and that had been the start of one of my best sum\u00admers. I met new friends. I star\u00adted hanging out with Jason Tweedy and his posey at the time: Mark But\u00adter\u00adworth, Mark War\u00adb\u00adu\u00adt\u00adon, Bri\u00adan Rostron, and Chris Hard\u00ading. It was\u00adn\u2019t even a rela\u00adtion\u00adship that was ever destined to last. We were very dif\u00adfer\u00adent people after very dif\u00adfer\u00adent things. But it was a time in my life that I was devel\u00adop\u00ading and thus sus\u00adcept\u00adible to so many of the things that plague a young adolescent.<\/p>\n
So, on that sunny June day, sat in the liv\u00ading room of her par\u00adents house, with Ian and Car\u00adoline out of the way in the kit\u00adchen, while I was star\u00ading out onto the fam\u00adily garden, she said that she thought we should split up, and all i could answer with was, \u201cif that\u2019s what you want.\u201d
\nShe teared my heart out and firmly fixed her\u00adself into my memor\u00adies for the rest of my life. I walked out of her house and took out my frus\u00adtra\u00adtion on the fence across the road. It was\u00adn\u2019t all bad. It was def\u00adin\u00aditely life form\u00ading for me. The bad poetry lead to my Eng\u00adlish teen\u00adage spend\u00ading more time with me as she encour\u00adaged me to write. This in turn improved my Eng\u00adlish and thus my abil\u00adity to write. Any aspir\u00ada\u00adtions that I may have of being an author must come out of that time.<\/p>\n
So, that all happened on June the 10th. I don\u2019t remem\u00adber the date because of all those things, and I don\u2019t remem\u00adber all those things because of the date. I remem\u00adber all those things because they happened to me and they had a pro\u00adfound affect on my life. I remem\u00adber June 10th as the day I got dumped, because it is Simon Hunter\u00ad\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n
Simon was one of my school friends with whom I hung out with, quite a bit at the time. We spent a lot of week\u00adends at each oth\u00aders house. We were both into com\u00adputers and we would spend a lot of time work\u00ading togeth\u00ader on com\u00adputer related pro\u00adjects. As the fol\u00adlow\u00ading few years pro\u00adgressed, he was one of the friends with\u00adin the inner circle. We drank a lot togeth\u00ader. We clubbed a lot togeth\u00ader. We had a great deal of fun.<\/p>\n
Simon\u2019s birth\u00adday is the only friend\u2019s birth\u00adday, old or new, that I remem\u00adber out\u00adright. I know that cer\u00adtain friends have birth\u00addays around a par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar time. The only oth\u00ader friend\u2019s birth\u00adday I remem\u00adber is Lind\u00adsay\u2019s, and even that I only remem\u00adber because for some reas\u00adon, that I have nev\u00ader been able to fathom, I can\u00ad\u2019t untangle it from my broth\u00ader Andrew\u2019s. Lind\u00adsay\u2019s is March and Andrew\u2019s is May, and the dates are the 23rd and 27th, but I can nev\u00ader remem\u00adber which way round. As March approaches I have to do this men\u00adtal jig thing to try and remem\u00adber the cor\u00adrect dates. For the record, and for pos\u00adter\u00adity, Lind\u00adsay\u2019s is the 27th!<\/p>\n
But on June 10th 25 Years ago, I got dumped, and I happened to know that it was Simon\u2019s birth\u00adday, I don\u2019t even know why I knew that on the day. It was a Tues\u00adday ( I\u2019ve just looked that up on t\u2019in\u00adter\u00adnet), so we must have made some\u00adthing of his birth\u00adday at school.<\/p>\n
So because those two things happened on the same day, the neur\u00adones in my brain formed some path\u00adway that in turn was much stronger that the two indi\u00advidu\u00adal events. Had the two events not occurred on the same day, then I am con\u00advinced I would remem\u00adber neither of the dates.<\/p>\n
Memory \u2014 it\u2019s a funny thing.<\/p>\n