[originally posted February 3 2012, 7:19 PM]
I was riding with my father yesterday along a winding blacktop road with no shoulders. We came across the spot where my son ran his car off the road and had to be extracted with the tow truck a few years ago. It reminded me of the time that I ignored the idiot lights on the dashboard of my parents' station wagon and burned up the engine. I reminded my dad of that story without identifying the culprit. My dad now has dementia, so he didn't really remember the story so well, let alone the identity of the perpetrator.
So I reminded him of the time when I was a teenager that I snuck out out of the upstairs of the house to run around after curfew. And when I came back home, I unknowingly stepped on the globs of oil in the driveway from his work truck and tracked them up the side of the house climbing up using the TV antenna pole. He didn't remember that episode either. However, I recall that at the time he simply (wisely) asked me "I wonder how those footsteps got there?" My confession was not forthcoming.
So yesterday I concluded that dementia offers amnesty to the so-called able-minded.
But maybe parents do that anyway. They smooth over the rough edges of the images of their children. Or they have the wisdom to blur the sharp focus. They forget the infractions so they can enjoy the fellowship.