1251: Bottomless Memory for Irrelevant Nonsense

I have, as the title suggests, a bottomless memory for completely irrelevant nonsense. I’m not sure how or why I have developed this particular characteristic, and it very rarely comes in handy, but there it is.

Occasionally it is a good icebreaker when hanging out with people that I have known for many years, as coming out with something that apparently only I remember often makes people laugh. And, as we all know, making people laugh is a good means of keeping a social situation going. (There are only so many times you can get away with starting a story with “Do you remember when…?” in a single gathering, however.)

I have no idea what causes my brain to remember the things it does, however. Let me give you an example, and you’ll see that there’s really no reason I should remember this particular incident.

When I was at school, a member of my main friendship group was a kid called Daniel. His main distinguishing features were his crooked teeth and his very outgoing, borderline insane nature — the latter of which frequently came to a head in Drama lessons. (An unrelated memory to the one I’m about to recount is the time my friends and I put together a short play called “The Time Trial of Dr. Paradox” in which Daniel played the titular villain, whose crowning moment was when he screamed “I want him tracked down by 2400 hours!” and knocked a small globe onto the floor, causing it to go rolling away and make our mutual friend Andrew almost piss himself with laughter.)

Our drama teacher for one year was actually also our school’s headmaster at the time, one Mr Cragg. Mr Cragg was a pleasant sort of middle-aged man, all beard and jovial nature. He would have made a good Father Christmas if his hair was white. He enjoyed playing theatre games in Drama lessons, and one day we were playing one that involved fruit. I don’t remember the exact game itself, but the bit of the memory I have inexplicably clung on to in the intervening 15+ years is the way in which Mr Cragg said the word “raspberry” (“Razzzberri!”), which my aforementioned friend Daniel found immensely amusing for weeks afterwards. He also found the word “Bilberry” similarly amusing, but that’s fair enough; I found it quite amusing, too, because it sounded a bit like “dildo”.

Well, okay, not really, but we were in our early teens; I’m not even going to pretend we had a particularly sophisticated sense of humour.

What puzzles me is how and why that memory has endured for so long. Why on Earth do I remember the way my old headmaster said the word “raspberry,” and the fact my friend Daniel found it incredibly amusing? I find it difficult to believe that if I ever saw Daniel again — I haven’t seen him since leaving school — that if I walked up to him and went “Razzzberri!” he’d have the slightest fucking clue what I was on about.

Ah well. I suppose it makes for good stories. Or at least confusing ones.