inlikeflynn

Some things stay with you even if they never happened. You dream them up somewhere and set them off to one side where they gather dust right along with everything else, and pretty soon they're indistinguishable from every other memory in your atticspace.

I have a very specific visual memory that's been with me since the early '90s. My mother told me all about Barry Allen one afternoon and how an accident in his crime lab turned him into a super-speedy crusader for Justice.



She told me all about him to prepare me for the live action television show that was to premiere that evening. She told me that the episode that they were going to show was called a "Pilot," which was the episode that the studios would look at and use to decide whether or not they wanted the show to continue. The "Pilot," therefore, came "before the actual show." That's how I remember her saying it. I remember it that way because based on that description, this is the image I came up with:



I don't know how I knew what the hell a test pattern was at that age, and I don't specifically remember creating the image and connecting it with that discussion, but I know that that's where it came from, and occasionally throughout my life something will happen and it'll bring that memory out of mothballs. I like it.

This time it was sorta deliberate. I've been downloading episodes of the show to watch because I hadn't seen it in so long. In fact, the last time I saw the Pilot, which I finished watching earlier this afternoon, was that very evening. I sat with my mother eating Pizza Hut pizza and we watched this show together.

What hurts me is that I remember the test pattern with more clarity than I do that evening with her.