I Can Practically Smell Christmas

I am so excited that it is finally Thanksgiving break. My weekend started off well, with a friendly little get-together with some friends, but quickly turned frightening after the guys decided to turn on Paranormal Entity. I am not going to lie...I get really scared at that kind of stuff. It's been two nights since we watched it and I'm still a bit jumpy. Other than that, things have been really laid back. Christmas is drawing nearer, and I'm so glad. My family put up the Christmas tree today and it now graces the foyer, stretching to the ceiling, adorned with the ornaments that we've accumulated over the years.
There is this one ornament that I hold especially dear to my heart. I made it when I was in first grade, I think, at my old Catholic school in Louisiana. I had been so excited that we were going to do a hands-on project, and in my overflowing enthusiasm, I forgot that the glue we were using to assemble the ornament was immensely hot, and I burned my finger. I had been so upset that the whole ornament process was kind of abandoned, although my benevolent teacher finished it for me and it has been unpacked and placed on the tree every year since.
The connotations we as humans have with things often strikes me as comical. We have memories leashed to nearly everything, and it's sort of reminiscent of time travel when we see something and our brains automatically take us to that memory, unpacking it from underneath layer upon layer of experiences. Many times have I been involved in something, and out of nowhere, my brain just goes swoosh! And I'm seeing the picture play back in the cogs of my brain like a motion picture, flickering on a screen only I can see in a special type of darkness.
I see an finely sharpened pencil and automatically, I see myself in our old kitchen, and my mom leaning down to hand me a pencil, but instead, dropping it, and it stabs me in the shin. (I still have a little pencil point embedded in my left leg...and it's been years.) I see an elevator with the imprint "Otis" on the side, a mark of the maker, I'm assuming, and I remember my wonderful week at International Science Fair and the epic race with Michelle Johnson to the Otis elevator every bright and shining morning. I hear a continuous click, and suddenly think of my many years of piano lessons, where I sat with one of the most inspiring people I've ever met as she set the metronome and indicated for me to start playing the practiced piece for her. Without memories, we would be the mindless members of a society unfit for originality, and those experiences we've gathered together like crisp apples in a bushel might as well evaporate into thin air.