Swiss cheese

As part of our Christmas weekend, E and I decided to rewatch all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. (Last year it was the LOTR trilogy.) We watched the first one Christmas night, and the last two last night. We had originally seen them all in the theatre. As the second film began and played on, I kept thinking, "I don't remember any of this." There were minor bits and pieces that seemed vaguely familiar, but overall, it was as if I'd never seen the film before.

Only I had. I had seen it the afternoon of July 16, 2006. It was a Sunday afternoon. The Sunday afternoon after the Saturday I didn't hear from A all day, and he missed our chat time. The Sunday afternoon after the morning where I called him again and again, and didn't get ahold of him, nor did he answer my e-mails. The Sunday afternoon after I'd called his apartment complex office and asked them to check for his truck, or knock on his door, and they refused to help me. The Sunday afternoon I was frantic, but still had a tiny bit of hope that maybe he'd been in some kind of accident and wasn't yet able to contact me. So E asked if I wanted to go to a movie to try and distract myself from my increasing panic, and we went to see POTC: Dead Man's Chest (until just now I didn't appreciate the foreshadowing, and I have to say, I don't much like it), and I left my phone on in case A called. When the phone rang, I was overcome with relief as I sprinted out into the lobby, only to see that it was my cousin calling me. My heart sank. She wanted to talk to me about her wedding a month hence, and I told her I was in the middle of a movie and would call her back. I didn't really care about the movie; I wanted the line open in case A called.

I think that was then I really started to suspect the worst. I was upset, and E was angry at A for being so inconsiderate and putting me through this. I told him A was never inconsiderate, and that this was bad. Really bad. Despite that feeling, I still waited for A to show up on chat that night, as always. He didn't show, and as I went to bed that night, I knew that as bad as that day had been, tomorrow was going to be worse. Tomorrow I was going to have to put our emergency plan into action and contact his family, who had no idea who I was. Tomorrow would be the day I called the police to check on him. Tomorrow would be the day my life changed forever.

Given the panic I was in during the film, and the daze I was in once "tomorrow" became "today," I guess it's not surprising that I would've blocked out that movie. But I didn't know until almost 3 1/2 years later that that had happened. It is so weird, this onion I am peeling. What else have I forgotten that I've forgotten?