I’m thirty-nine years old and I still vividly remember this one moment as a three year old camping with my parents when I got a splinter in my pinky and walked over to have my dad pry it out. There’s a snapshot of this in a photo album somewhere at my mom’s house in Vegas. But I remember that complete feeling of trust in that one moment: there was something wrong, something hurting me, and my dad was going to fix it. Simple as that.
My mom has been traveling quite a bit since she retired about ten years ago. The other day when we were talking on the phone, she mentioned that she was headed to New York City. “You’re leaving for New York?” I asked. “Huh. When? When will you be back?”
She sighed impatiently. “I emailed you my itinerary. Why can you never remember my travel plans?”
“Why?” I snapped. “Maybe it’s because I’ve got a gajillion other things rattling around in my brain. I’ve got my schedule. Charley’s, Colin’s, Kai’s. Don’t give me a hard time woman. My brain is full.”
I routinely forget where I put my keys. I still don’t know where my pool pass is.
All of which makes me wonder what determines what information is important enough to be remembered, to be tucked away safely in this finite brain of mine.
My dad once casually mentioned that he read an article somewhere that someone had done a study and found that the cleanest public toilets are usually the ones closest to the restroom entrance. To this day, that’s the stall that I choose. Why did that stick in my brain?
On the other hand, I have a hard time remembering my closest friends’ birthdays.
It just all seems so arbitrary. I picture my brain like a walk in closet, filled with all these shoe boxes full of memories arranged without rhyme or reason. I like to think of memories as physical things. I just wonder why I’ve made room for some and not others…
image from: http://z.hubpages.com
eleven bee 