This Week In Not Surfing

Some guy with ebola went bowling in my neighborhood this week. When I went to the CNN Crisis Center for Ebola Hyperbole, I found that I had to watch a Geico ad before watching their video news coverage, which ended up playing a little bit like the Geicko ad. Well, maybe more like a sneak peek of the upcoming film "The Muppets Take the News Room." Ebola is scary. Ebola is incurable. Ebola makes you poo blood and vomit out your haggis-like boiled intestines. Someone quoted this week that it took Ronald Reagan 20,000 AIDS deaths before he addressed it, but it has taken Obama only four deaths before addressing ebola. Well, really it's almost 5,000, with more than 10,000 infected. I also read that it's possible that in the coming weeks, "without substantial intervention," there could be 10,000 new cases of ebola each week in Africa. Everyone says that it's very difficult to contract ebola if the correct precautions are taken. Someone else said that getting in and out of one of those ebola-proof hazmat suits effectively is like trying to undo the knot your seven year old kid has managed to make outta their shoe lace. Naked, in a snowstorm. Frankly, I'm not too worried. Oscar De La Renta died. Ben Bradlee died. Not of ebola poisoning.

Everyday, take ten minutes to write a memory from your life down in a notebook. Don't make the memory anymore that maybe, say, eight sentences. It could be as little as a single sentence. But do it everyday. At the end of a clander year, you'll have 365 distinct memories that you've documented. At the end of five years you'll have 1,825 memories set down for posterity, set down to pique the imagination and curiosity of future generations of yous. Really. I did the math.

My memory for today: the time I walked in on my eldest brother's girlfriend changing in my parent's bathroom when we lived on that cul de sac, in that house with the big marshy field as a backyard. I had previously walked in on them making out on his bed. He was probably either a senior in high school or a freshman in college. I was maybe eight years old. Perhaps seven. She was wearing white panties. Or maybe they were light pink.

 364 gems to go.