A Perfect Memory? Forget About it!

"Hey Honey, you seen my keys?" "They 're on the counter, hey what time did we say we would be there?" Ahhh memory. What a funny thing it is. I will be the first to admit that I don't have the greatest memory. Just like the joke, my memory is good but it's short. My wife has a saying "I have a photographic memory, but I am out of film." Funny stuff. I hear a lot of great jokes, I just can never remember them. What's with that. I sure wish I could have a perfect memory. I could remember where my keys were, where I left my wallet. I could remember my password to my old email account. Hey, what was the name of that guy, you know the one on that show? Oh come on, you know, the show. The one that what's her name used to be on before she went to that new show. For Pete's sake, she married that guy, you know the one from that place? Maybe a perfect memory would simplify life. Then again maybe not.

Be careful what you wish for, just ask Jill Price the 43 year old California woman can't forget. Literally. She has perfect recall. In an interview with ABC TVs Diane Sawyer she said "I always explain it to people like I'm walking around with a video camera on my shoulder. I walk around with my life right next to me." Great right. Like your life is on tape and you just have to rewind and there you are. Good if you need to find your keys, but what if you are trying to find; say, happiness. No, think about it. You couldn't remember anything without remembering everything! Everything. Every last thing. When we think back about; say, Uncle Bob. We remember the good things and forget the other stuff. Jill can't do that. When she remembers she remembers warts and all. They say that hindsight is 20/20. Yeah right. When we look back we are as blind as a bat. We remember exactly what we want to remember, nothing more. Our rose colored glasses are like coke bottles and bifocals to boot. Poor Jill is watching reruns of her life while we wax nostalgic, she remembers the pain and the sorrow, as well as the good things.


Let's face it if we could not wipe the chalkboard of our memory we would have trouble doing anything. Imagine never being able to delete anything from your computer. It would become so cluttered that it would be useless. There was a case of a man in the Soviet Union during the sixties who was an assistant to a medium level bureaucrat he too had perfect recall. They did intensive testing and were very disappointed to find out that he was of only average intelligence. It had been supposed that he would be highly intelligent as he could remember so much. Intelligence, it seems is more than just recall. It seems that most of us forget what we need to forget. We think our mind is like some great filing cabinet. It is not necessarily what is stored there that matters it is how fast you can access it and knowing what to access that builds intelligence. Whew thank god, otherwise I would be a idiot. My mind is a sieve. I forget people's names all the time. I would never make a very good politician.

So what we might suppose would be a key to untold happiness is; it seems, a burden not a benefit. Jill Price cannot reminisce. She is unable to appreciate nostalgia. Imagine that! Wow, where would I be? I mean I have been told that is what I do best. Think about it. When we reminisce we forget about the bad parts of the old days. We put on our rose colored bifocals and we filter out all the bad stuff.

It is funny too, what triggers an attack of nostalgia. Usually it is a smell. A whiff of woodsmoke may trigger a memory of Grandma's wood stove and the wonderful cooking she brought out of her oven. Meanwhile, forgotten is all the back breaking work of feeding the shiny stove with wood. The cutting and splitting and hauling. We forget how overjoyed she was when she got her first electric range. How she had heat at the flick of a switch. How the kitchen stayed cool in summer, while she baked a pie. Jill could tell you this, she can't forget anything. She is burdened by it. Don't get me wrong I would never want to join her. I love to reminisce. I mean really, just read my stuff. So what if I misplace my keys, or miss the odd appointment? If your birthday card is late, well sorry, my bad. I remember the really important things. Well most of them anyways. Maybe it's age related. I mean there is more to remember when you get older. These young people nowadays, what do they have to reminisce about anyways, now when we were young we had some good things to reminisce about. Nostalgia, it just aint what it used to be...