highly sensitive power

“It’s like being trapped in an elevator with my own music.”

“He’s been a pawn in my little recovery game.”

“Everything’s very in-between the trapezes right now.”

“Is dog hair your sole medium?”

Pluck them from the conversation that gives them contextual meaning and some phrases can go on to live long, meaningful lives on their own. Capturing these phrases in a little blank book so they can be remembered later creates a repository of hilarity triggers which, when browsed through later, provide a great way to lighten up and evoke memories of good times.

After fifteen years, the first entries in my family’s out-of-context quote book, each just a short string of words, are as evocative as scent, conjuring whole scenes frozen at the moment of capture. It helps that the speaker’s name, the date, and the location have been noted for each quote, but that’s an embellishment on the basics. The main thing is to grab the pen before the phrasing fades.

Some people seem to get more frequent quote book billing than others – pithy folk who can turn a phrase with skill. During the time I was housemates with a friend and her five-year-old daughter, years ago, I had to keep the quote book close by at all times because they were naturals at silliness, at glibly producing the capturable quote. Visitors to our house got in the habit of walking in through the front door and saying, “Hi. What’s new in the quote book?”

And I may have married my husband for his quote-book-packing quick-witted propensity:

Me: “I think in another life I would be a mechanic.”
He: “I would be a ladder. Or a toupee.”

Or this one:

Me: “Did you iron that shirt?”
He: “Well, I sat on it, and I was hot.”

Additions to the out-of-context quote book need not be limited to the purely hilarious or to things spoken by people you know. It’s all about whatever sparks your interest to the point of wanting to remember it later. Overheard bits of conversation can be included (I overheard one man say to another at the Vancouver airport: “I never told you this because I was kind of embarrassed, but I named my dog after your dog”). And mangled English translations from menus appear in our book with some frequency (“Chicken interlarded with bacon – à la pheasant”).

Kept on the coffee table or in the kitchen – wherever the comedy lurks – the out-of-context quote book makes remembering easy. And later, browsing through the book alone or with others wrings lots of laughter mileage out of that first spark of wit.