The Thakkar Family

If I lost my cell phone today with no way of retrieving my contact list I might as well be stranded on a desert island somewhere. First of all, do I even still know how to operate a land line? Do they even still exist?* I would have to borrow someone else's cell phone (preferably an iPhone) to reconnect myself with the world. But then I am not sure what I would do while looking at those nine numbers in a 3x3 square. I talk to my mom at least once a day, but have to pause and crinkle my brow when trying to come up with her cell number to tell someone. And my friends, well, I would probably have to hang out at Publix hoping to run into someone to tell them to let the world know they need to call me so that I could get their numbers again (or, then again, there is always facebook).

It seems that we no longer have to remember much of anything these days. Technology does it all for us. Which makes me wonder, how is the computer as a cultural machine effecting our cognitive abilities to remember? I had always heard that in order to help "protect" your brain against Alzheimer you should exercise it by playing memory games. I felt a sense of relief every time I would flip to the back of my mom's People magazine and find a crossword puzzle completed in her handwriting. I wondered if as the computer acquires more and more memory capabilities does our human memory retain less and less? (This is an actual beginnings of a researchable question in my thesis notebooks from over a year and a half ago. But I digress.)

Through the course of my life I have had to recommit over seven new addresses of my own to memory and more phone numbers than I can remember (of course, I am losing it). I stopped memorizing friends numbers somewhere between my first generation, yellow and black, Nextel and my second. But as machines are remembering more and more for us now-a-days it is quite nostalgic to think back to the days when you could dial your best friend's seven digits from memory in the blink of an eye to ask if she could stay the night on Friday or to let her know you were leaving your house on your bike and would be there in 20 minutes and to have cheese quesadillas ready. The Thakkar's have been at the same address with the same phone number since the day, the summer before third grade, when Radha rode her red bike the two streets down to the little league ball field where her brother Vipul played on a team coached by my dad with my brother. I think she came looking for friends, but little did she know that we would be signing our letters, RT + CM = BFF and each wearing one half of broken heart charms a few years later. Then becoming godparents to children just a few more years beyond that. (If you hunt you can find four blog posts dedicated to this BFF of mine.)

When there are so many things changing, shifting, moving and competing for our dwindling memory space all around us it is really, really nice to know that you can count on certain things, certain people, to stay the same. And it is even nicer to know that I will always be able to get a hold of (or at least dial the seven digits to get a hold of) the Thakkar family (*on their land line) at their house two streets down from the ball field.

On this past Christmas Eve day, with my camera in tow, I pulled my car into the same driveway I used to pedal my bike up into 20 years earlier to join the "expanding" Thakkar family in their yard. Hoping to capture this moment in time in their memories, and my own, for many years to come...

(So, Thakkars, let's do this again in 20 more years... Same time. Same place. I'll call you to let you know I am on my way.)