The things that pop into my mind at any given moment fascinate me.

I was completing on on-line survey. I had to laugh at one of the questions asking which choice was not an ice cream flavor. It gave the choices of chocolate, vanilla, mint chocolate chip, and carpet, not necessarily in that order. In fact, carpet came first. I’m guessing this is to spot robots and people filling out surveys just for the heck of it, breezing through, clicking the first choice, just to earn a reward. Whatever. All of the other questions are multiple choice, though.

So there I am, clicking along, putting some thought into my answers. A written question comes up. Again, whatever, but out of the blue, this one asks about a childhood memory. I wrote down the first thing that popped into my head.

Eating rock candy with my Grandfather on a store-front porch in Amish country.

I looked at what I wrote. I was stunned. I knew that memory was in there, somewhere, but how did that just pop up as the first thing in my mind? This was a very long time ago. My Grandfather passed away when I was very little, maybe four or five years old. This had to happen when I was three. There’s not much else I remember from that long ago. The Moon landing. Nixon leaving the White House. That’s pretty much it.

Some hypnotist/analyst will have a field day with me someday.