The Good Part

by Sophie Cousens

Is that what life is—missing out in your twenties because you have no money, then missing out in your forties because you have no time?

“Do you think memories make us who we are, Michael?” “No,” he says firmly. “Who we are is our code of morals, the things we stand for, not our ability to recall the past.”

By the time we get to Farnham, I’ve been educated on all the many conspiracy theories Leonard believes: That peanut butter is not made from peanuts, but a genetically modified substitute called Pleanuts, grown in underground labs in America. That JFK was not assassinated but lived to ninety-six in a Florida golfing community. That rather than building spaceships, NASA spends its time spying on the population. As I’m listening to all this, I start to question whether a seventy-something-year-old conspiracy theorist with a criminal record is the sort of person I should be encouraging my child to be friends with. I mean, it’s one thing to be neighborly, but quite another to be a negligent parent.

“Ha! Life is never sorted.” I narrow my eyes at the old woman. “Was that the lesson I was supposed to learn? Because if it was, you could have just told me that, I am very receptive to feedback.”