They are funny old things. I often worry about just how much the brain retains, largely without my knowledge let alone blessing. Old phone numbers for houses we moved from when I was 7. Birthdays for almost anyone I don't like. Song lyrics - dear lord - the song lyrics. As soon as you hear the opening bar, that's it, your brain produces all of the lyrics that 5 seconds earlier you would have sworn you didn't know.
However annoying or inefficient our brains may seem at retaining rubbish and forgetting the important neural Post-Its, just occassionally it digs up a gem. Like yesterday. I was out in the car and I was hungry. Decided to get a McDriveThru on my way home and, having wrongly recalled the location of one McShits', I found myself almost home, parked in the 'local' with the radio on. With trepidation I had plumped for the Radio 1 Chart Show (a risky selection for a 30-something these days but it treated me relatively kindly).
So there I was. Intrigued to hear that James Blunt was back in the charts - who knew? - and unsurprised by the volume of well-known, well-trodden paths through Memory Lane my brain was trying to direct me towards. I wasn't in the mood. There was a guy, a break-up, tears, and James Blunt's first album on repeat for many months of 2005...(and 2006, to be honest). But then two worlds - or at least cranial continents - collided. The combination of already having connected to 'that' chapter of my past, fused with the taste of my Big Tasty (or McNasty as one of my friend's calls it.) You see, I thought to myself just how delicious (not a word I EVER usually associate with burgers of said calibre) the Big Tasty sauce is. And it is. Creamy, the colour of thousand island, the taste of, erm, Big Tasty sauce.
Suddenly, there he was. I was sat in my car back in 2005 with the James Blunt guy. Outside McDonald's in Tonypandy (yes, non-Welshies, that's a real place. You're thinking of Pontypandy where Fireman Sam lives). And I was being told I simply had to lose my virginity - I had to try my first ever Big Tasty and discover the wonder that is the sauce.
From then until now, I have never recalled that tiny and insignificant fact - he was responsible for me trying that burger, way back when. Regardless of how many I've had since (almost none, obviously, as my body is a temple). Regardless of the number of conversations I've had with my boyfriend about how incredible I find his choice to always have his burgers plain - even the Big Tasty! Can you imagine choosing NOT to have the only yummy part of the whole menu?!
Nope. My brain chose that moment, 9 years later, when I was alone, in my car, listening to James Blunt and eating a burger to poke at me with a 'new' memory stick, probably to see if it could make me cry. I, thus, conclude that our memory has a mind of its own (ironically?) and behaves like a bigger boy in the playground, just waiting for the perfect moment to pull a girl's pigtails and make her cry.
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I would like to point out that a) I didn't cry but was more 'well bugger me' about the whole thing and b), this post was in no way endorsed by McD's or any of their affiliates in the sauce-making arena (although I am open to free Big Tasty sauce for life as some kind of sponsorship deal).
