The useless dates

I WOKE UP in the middle of the evening and the first thing that came to mind was that it was the anniversary of my first communion, an absolutely inconsequential date in my biography. Another day, while looking for a headline for a news story, I remember the anniversary of a schoolmate who was never my friend. I guess it stuck with me when he was handing out Sugus candies to celebrate it, long before children's playgrounds existed. As irrelevant as my communion.

Random dates assault my brain, anniversaries of trivial events that haven't shaped my life: the day I saw Trainspotting at the cinema, of which I only remember a character waking up shitting in bed. Great scene. Or a concert that left no impression on me. Besides births, it also happens to me with deaths: the anniversaries of Kurt Cobain or Rocío Jurado surprise me, without being a devoted fan of either grunge or volcanic melodic song. I know my family's ID numbers by heart, from when I used to fill out scholarships, and those of friends for whom I've bought plane tickets.

This useless ability has never sparked any admiration among my peers; rather, it has turned me into a joke. If at a dinner someone recalls an adolescent anecdote, there's always a sarcastic one who finishes: "Of course, that was on November 23, 2002...". In reality, they don't finish the story, but rather enter an absurd drift where they can end up referencing everyone from Mayra Gómez Kemp to Napoleon. I keep quiet, even though I know that day was October 14, 2000. And then, already assuming I'm the date geek, I burst out laughing in communion. With my friends. Not in church. "You're kidding," they tell me. And that's the least, if you've been freely acting as Chandler Bing and Dorothy Sbornak with them for years.

I don't know what psychological, neurological, or bogus explanation there might be for remembering useless dates and phone numbers of people you haven't called in 20 years. I imagine my brain turned into a crazy lost and found warehouse, where half of the characters from Inside Out are throwing balls of memories at each other, hopped up on speed, while the other half wanders around drowsily, with their eyes rolled back, trying to hold onto the memory ball that contains what I ate for lunch today. It must be because I destroy my short-term memory by writing columns like this on sleepless nights.