“Enjoy your retirement, they said, as they read out the celebratory statement they’d prepared for the occasion.
“Towards the end, they summed up the facts of my life. All the data collated, all the facts and the figures and the failures, recorded at source not just by my devices but by all of theirs, all of yours.
“What struck me the most as I listened, as I watched, as I smiled and reacted exactly how I was supposed to, was not how much of this wasted life of mine I had forgotten, but how much I remembered. All those stupid comments, all those awkward silences, those social embarrassments, those cowardly retreats. All the regrets, all the shame. The lies, the truths. I remembered it all.
“I remembered it all.”
___________
Notes:
1. Written in December 2019
2. And with probably the longest title anything of mine has yet had
3. Even despite my love of long titles