Penpal

Content Warning: This section depicts cursing, graphic violence, implied animal cruelty and death, implied child abuse, and child death.

The narrator shares that as a teen, he worked at a deli that offered free ice cream to children once a week. One day, a young girl came in and asked for several flavors. To her dismay, she learned that she could choose only one. Out of kindness, the narrator gave her five. This lifted the girl’s mood, and the experience has stayed with the narrator ever since. He considers it likely that the girl has already forgotten the moment because it’s natural for people to forget the past as they get older.

The narrator explains how attempts to look back on the past are often fraught with distortion and gaps in memory. In some cases, the mind creates memories to fill in gaps, putting people in moments they couldn’t have possibly experienced. In other cases, the mind’s capacity to forget becomes a gift, obscuring especially bad memories. Bad memories always exist, however, and recalling them may provide context for other memories. The wholeness of those memories may be enough to make people want to forget them again.