Criticism

"How was the wedding last week?"

"Well, it was pretty. But there were a lot of drunk people."

Yes, that's literally how we've been responding to the question. Certain of us have pointed out that we tend to always remember the bad things instead of the good ones. "Why can't we just say 'it was really pretty'?" someone said last week. "Do we HAVE to keep talking about the drunk people?"

I think it's a natural tendency. Remembering the negative instead of the positive, I mean, not remembering drunk people. When you have one of those days Anne talks about where you're watching the kids for the first time and two get into an argument while you're changing a littler one, mopping up after an accident with another little one, and realizing a third little one is in the bathroom throwing up...it tends to stick in your memory a lot better than the (happily) boring normal day that followed!

The question is, is it a bad thing? The phrase, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" comes to mind. You sorta tend to remember the thing that made the biggest impression on you. I bet Mrs. Lincoln had no idea what the play was about by the end of the night, no matter how good the production up to the point of that very famous pistol shot. Should it've been any different?

Because lemme tell you, seeing that many people drunk at once sure made an impression in this impressionable brain. Even more than the lovely flowers and the terrific dinner and the fun it was getting a whole hotel just to our family. I've since been informed that I've obviously never been to a real wedding before if I haven't seen the kind where everyone says, "Well, even if everything else is crummy, at least there's free drinks!"

Yikes-a-roni.

Though I have to admit, there's a big difference between remembering behavior I didn't like and having your whole life change because someone just shot your husband. But still...can you really help what you remember clearest? Or is it just the way we talk about it that gets so annoying?