an itty bitty shitty ditty

Fabricland… Fabricland!

I cannot remember whether or not it rained at my grandmother’s funeral.  I cannot remember the eye color of my first lover or even, for that matter, her name.  I don’t know what word I first uttered from my infant lips.  I remember nothing of Quantum Mechanics, the most difficult college level course I ever completed.  But that jingle, that infernal jingle, rummages through my brain and cobbles itself together at least once a week.  Fabricland!  I have never in my life bought fabric; I cannot imagine why my ridiculous brain should have latched onto this pesky, poorly written half-ditty. 

I do not sew.  I appreciate fabrics about as much as I appreciate bra straps: I recognize their utility for those who are not I, but that’s the extent of my judgment on the matter.  I’ve learned so many things in my admittedly (thus far) brief lifetime.  Almost all of them I would gladly have retained over that mindless jingle.  Give me the top five Magic: The Gathering cards from my favorite Black-Blue deck in sixth grade.  Give me the name of my parents’ friend’s daughter, whom I met but once in Italy at the age of three, and will never meet again.  I would even take the memory of my tongue coming unstuck from an ice-cold metal lamppost when I was eight.  I know tongue peeling happened, because I’ve shared the story many times, but I do not, thankfully, recall the sensations it left on my frigid body.  Surely it must have been unpleasant.  But I would happily take the tearing of my taste buds over Fabricland… Fabricland!  Useless piece of shit.

If only the agony ended at Fabricland.  There is more – much more.  Why, for example, have I retained the theme song to Power Rangers, a show I have detested ever since my schoolyard peers proclaimed me a putty patroller at recess make-believe?  I was not even important enough to be a featured monster, for fuck’s sake.  The song is admittedly a simple one – Go go power rangers! – but I could have just  as easily retained some profound Socrates quote, something about knowing oneself for example. Damn televisions, those surrogate parents of mine.  Then there is the vivid memory of the class bully in fifth grade stealing my cheat sheet before a test  – one I had spent an entire night arranging onto a perfectly printed leaflet.  What he said to me when he refused to give it back – what are you going to do, tell on me? – those words reverberate in my mind with alarming frequency.  It’s a cheat sheet; I really should not be upset by either its loss or by the bully’s snarky retort.  For all I know, he might have saved me from a self-destructive and dishonest life, for I never used or considered using a cheat sheet every again.

Mostly I wish I could remember more lucidly my interactions with loved ones.  Some of them will die before I do.  Some will die soon, even.  Some are already dead.  I have nothing but faint tracings of their faces, gruff voices spoken from behind leaden veils.  I do not remember the feel of my uncle’s fingers in my palms.  I do not remember the shape of my father’s upper teeth, or whether the mole on his face is on the left side or the right side.  I don’t remember which girl first let me hold her hand.  I have no idea when I last saw my brother and what he looked like when I did.  But that song, that god damned song, that interminably repetitive refrain reiterates forever in my brain, the synapses permanently etched and echoing with that god damned compound word.  Fabricland.

Photo by Alex Simand

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Alex is a Creative Writing MFA student at Antioch Universtiy Los Angeles and a Canadian expat living in San Francisco.  He writes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.  He sometimes shares his musings and meanderings on his blog.