Isn’t that how every story should begin? Even if the sucker’s in present tense, it got written and revised after what really happened—or was imagined to happen—hopelessly entangled—actually happened. Our present past is a reinvention, a reimagining of the facts. That’s not just old age. The boundary’s always been more than a little slippery. Still. The story you’re about to hear changed your narrator. Isn’t that the very definition of getting older—change? Of a story, for that matter. We change until we die and become other people’s memories, and of course they change too. Might as well get over yourself now. Once you’re dead, other people get to decide who you are. Why let them get started on that now? Getting older doesn’t just glide along, however, smooth and easy at a steady pace. It’s like a clogged-up little creek for many years, quiet and tranquil, same old trickle downstream, but when the hard rains come, then watch out, because then everything changes all at once, and washes your little world away.
