Four weeks ago, I was sitting in the same chair I am sitting in now, writing an article, when I once again looked at the Bobby Orr photo hanging on the wall in front of me. It’s funny that the photo is such an inspiration, even if I never saw the game, didn’t grow up idolizing Orr, and don’t really know that much about that particular final series.

Anyway, I was sitting here four weeks ago, looking at the the date on the photo: “May 10, 1970”.

As I was just about to go to the World Championship in Switzerland, and as I knew that the final was going to be played on May 10, 2009, I made a mental note of the date, all fired up to sneak it into a story from Bern, somehow.

I also knew that my mental notes tend to get scattered, lost and forgotten, so in line with my recent resolution to start making better notes, I did write an actual note of it, too.

I think.

I was trying to find it in my notebook just now, but couldn’t, so I thought I had written it down somewhere else. But there’s nothing in my “random” Scrivener file, and I couldn’t find a mention on my iPhone notes, either.

Which is why there were no references to the Orr goal in my report from the Worlds on May 10.

Next season, the tournament will begin on May 7, so there’s no reason to expect any classic goals thirty years after the Orr goal.

Now that I went through my notebook. I did see a note of something I saw in a book called “Traffic” – how large objects seem to me moving slower – which reminded me of something I was talking to my wife about this morning, and was supposed to find it for her in the book – namely a comment about eye contact between a pedestrian and the person driving a car – but which I had failed to make a note of after I had spoken with her.

There we go. On a fresh new page, it now says, “TRAFFIC – EYE CONTACT” as a reminder of that thing. But better yet, I will get that book and find the passage right now.

It was pretty interesting, if I remember it correctly.