Human memory is a strange and wonderful thing.
How do we remember things?
I'm not referring to the biomechanics of how memory works so much as to how we each individually "store" the events that shaped our past and perhaps traumatized us and perhaps made us feel extraordinary joy.
Do we store the memories of those times like a movie film roll? Or is it more like a series of snapshots or stills that we can pull out and look at individual moments without actually being able to "play the film" live? Or are we actually recalling how we felt the moment, more than the actual events?
And why are some moments so memorable that they seem burned into our brains forever while others — that may have occurred at almost the same time in our past — have faded into the mists of time?
Even though I was there for over five years, I don't remember going to University.
What I do remember are specific little snippets; moments in time that left a lasting impression on me. But they don't necessarily have anything to do with ”going to University.”
I remember the smell of my very old fashioned little tiny apartment on Norwalk Lane; it hadn't been updated since it was put up in the 60s and it had a strange orange-brown shag carpet that undoubtedly contained the filth of hundreds of college students before me. I remember the window air conditioner which would invariably drip condensation on the inside and I had to put a jug under it to catch the drips or the carpet would get wet and moldy.
I don't remember any of my classes, but I do remember a girl named Julie who was more interesting and mature than the average college co-ed because she had lived in the Netherlands for a couple of years.
I remember how my cat Max showed up on my birthday; a large silver tabby kitten who just wandered into the house with others coming for a gathering... he walked into the bedroom and went to sleep on my bed like he owned the place. Nobody ever claimed him, so he became "my" cat.
I remember buying 20-pound bags of potatoes from the nearby Safeway store because it was cheap food — at 99 cents a bag, on sale — and I knew 100 ways to prepare potatoes. I remember feeling somewhat smug because my food budget was so much lower than all my friends who thought living on fast food was "cheap."
When I look back further, it is much the same. I remember snippets, but there's no continuity. And maybe that's just the nature of of our brains...
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2026.10.27 01:33 PDT
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