Have you ever been on automatic pilot, doing something routine, and suddenly you realize you can’t actually recall several minutes that obviously happened? Like, your brain just sort of checked out and your body continued on doing what it was supposed to do? I kind of have that memory for a lot of my life. I haven’t decided if my brain deletes information it figures we don’t need long-term, or if it just gets written over by more information being added.
I was filling out a form recently and it asked a routine medical question about a procedure I had to remove skin cancer—the year, not the day of the week or the hour of the office visit—and I drew a blank. I couldn’t even begin to guess or use the process-of-elimination to determine it. I know I had the procedure, and that’s it. I went to my Permanent Record Brain—my husband. Sure enough, he not only knew the year I had the medical procedure, but he knew the month and the doctor’s name, and if pressed, I bet he could tell you the insurance bill.
My husband has an amazing memory. He can tell you sports stats like who won the second Super Bowl and all the starting pitchers of the entire 2010 World Series or the teams and mascots of all the college groups. Okay, okay—I know they are called something other than groups, but I can’t remember what that is. Not clubs. Not teams. Conferences? I think that’s it.
It’s not just sports, either. He can tell you all the classes he had in the seventh grade—in order. I can state with somewhat certainty that I went to seventh grade. And that it was at Santa Rosa Junior High. Sometime in the early 1980s. To figure it out exactly I’d have to do math, which is another problem.
I have come to terms with the fact that I have a fuzzy memory system for things most people consider hard-core facts. I literally cannot remember how old I am without stopping to think about it. Or ask my husband. I have to check my driver’s license to be sure of my height.
I have more fleeting memories for a lot of my life, like specific moments or encounters. For instance, I remember scenes from a house we lived in when I was two (a fact solidified by family members) and I recall with perfect clarity falling out of a pear tree as a kindergartener and having the wind knocked out of me. As I lay there, panicking, a woman leaned over me and told me, “Don’t worry, you won’t remember this when you grow up. You never remember the bad things.” Clearly.
I remember having the chicken pox in first grade, and being delirious with fever. I fell asleep at my aunt’s house, and woke up at my grandma’s and freaked out because I had no memory of the in-between.
I vividly remember my toddler Thomas climbing over the balcony and hanging on the outside of the railing, directly over the tile entryway—but I’d be hard pressed to tell you with certainty exactly how old he was. I think three, but it could have been two.
I do remember him calling, “Ayudame,” Spanish for “help me,” because he had very little language and most of it came from TV shows like Dora the Explorer and Thomas the Tank Engine.
Those memories are emotionally charged, so it makes sense that they’d stay with me, even if I can’t pin them to a specific date.
Sometimes my fuzzy memory works with me, though. I can re-read a book and still be pleasantly surprised by scenes or even whole plot lines. Even my own writing—I have literally read stories I wrote ten years ago and could only vaguely remember that I took part in their creation. The downside to that silver lining, of course, is I can find a scrap of paper with a name and a phone number on it in my own writing and have absolutely no idea who the person is or why I have the number. Sigh.
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at ml****@so***.net.
