You must remember this…


She can't forget

Would you really want to not forget anything ever? All the ephemeral nonsense? All the trivia all the information that passes in front of you on a daily bases? All of it just hanging around forever? Peoples Choice nominees? Imagine remembering everything you learn. I mean, I could see this as having an upside, you could not be beat at trivia night at the bar, and who doesn’t want to be known for their mastery of bar trivia but… Think of every single thing you learn, see, read, hear - hanging around indefinitely in the mental file you would normally just use for your phone number and children’s ages. What if your brain couldn’t purge it's memory vaults ever? It doesn’t say whether or not she maintains the emotional reaction the events might have caused her… But it could all become trivia; I don’t have emotional responses to trivia. I don’t think I would want the important things that happened to me to be the same to me as trivia.

The article says she remembers the day that a 40s star died – she wasn’t around to remember the death but she did know what day the man died on and where he was when he died. Is that a true memory of the event or is that just a very good recall of the facts. Not so much an example of a photographic memory but a Xerox of a memory?

What were you wearing on March 21, 2005? Do you remember? Why? I bet you could bring up what you were wearing on September 11, 2001, or not, I can’t and I can remember just about everything else about that day. Why do I not remember what I was wearing? My outfit on that day was not relevant? Everything else was, even the trivial things. Trying to remember what I was wearing makes me tense, why?

Right now I am wearing a sweater I was wearing the day I got fired from a job. This is my “Fired by that bastard Glen” sweater. I was wearing a blue button down under it. I do not remember what I was wearing when I was told my job at the Nursing Home was being eliminated due to “budgetary issues” – I do remember the date, October 16, 2000 because my last day there was November 1, 2000. I remember I stopped wearing a watch on June 16, 1994 but I don’t really know for sure what the event that made me decide “I am never putting on a watch again”, was, I’m thinking it was an important because I to this day, 11 years later, still do not wear a watch and have no desire to do so. But I don’t know why.

But dayum. I would love to stop forgetting things! Where is that packet that I put down and now can’t find? Where did I leave my credit card? What did I tell that person? Who did I give that chart to? Who told me what? I can see having a great memory as a really cool thing to have. But, there is all that flotsam and jetsam that I would also be stuck remembering that maybe I don’t need to remember. Do I need to remember what day it was and what the weather was like the when Dogger ate the the TV remote?

Is it necessary to remember the names of my college room mates? It is more important that I do remember my elementary school teachers names? (Cummings, Barney, Deaton, Robinson, Henley, Estep. In order, thank you very much) Sure, they taught me but I didn’t get dressed every day in a 9x12 room with any of their either. Room mates – um. Cindy who put hairspray on her hair every night before she went to sleep! The last one was called Cindy! I had seven in three years. Something about each of them should have stood out to me more to me than: Two were pledging sororities, one was into rugby players, one was Thai, one was crazy, one was Cindy, there is another one I don’t remember at all.