Last night I had a ‘ta-dah’ moment. I was lying in bed and for who knows what reason I started thinking about my friends the Cooks.  A family moved in down on the highway.  They lived in a mobile home placed beside an auto wrecking yard.  The dad managed the wrecking yard.  I don’t remember what the mother did.  There was an older daughter and two boys about my age.  One of them was named Danny.  The other, I don’t remember.  The two boys and I played around and hung out for a summer.  Seems to be how my life went.  I had not thought about them in years and suddenly I remember.  Weird.  Here’s another vignette for my timeline, I thought to myself. I need to record the memory before it slips way.

I’m in a bit of a race. As I often complain about, ‘time’ is an enemy. It’s my greatest enemy. I find myself drifting between ‘oh shit’ and ‘ta-dah’ moments dozens of times per day.  I am in a race between those two moments.  I must finish this website before ‘oh shit’ out paces ‘ta-dah.’

The memory of the Cook clan and our fun together was nice.  A couple days ago though I was talking with some insurance company or whatever on the phone and I had a massive ‘oh shit’ moment.  They asked for my social security number.  Suddenly, I could not remember it.  The most important number of my life, the one drilled in my head by the military, the one I could never forget, I forgot.  Oh shit.  I actually had to pull out my billfold and look at the card.  That was frustrating.  And it was a little frightening.  What the hell is going on in my head?

Probably one in a billion people sit down with the explicit purpose of recording their entire life on a website.  Well, people write autobiographies, sure, but those are truly self-promoting vanity projects.  This website is different.  It’s me. All me.  It’s the big things and the Teddy Obscura, little ‘ta-dah’ moments I need to fill the gaps.  My worry is that those moments will evaporate with my quickly devolving mental processes.  So how about you toss your support behind my ‘ta-dah’ moments and send me some “you go for it” kind of messages?  That would be great!

Ted Gresham, March 17, 2026