Shelving memories

I'm wondering how much I can remember from each year of my life. If I were to try to extract all the memories I have from each year I can remember, what would I get? To help, school would be used as a framing device, since I know I'll be able to recall things better if I can remember what grade I was in and who my teachers were, and from there I can remember the names of my classmates and where I might have been sitting, and from that I can remember certain class assignments or funny things that happened then, and who my friends were and what things we might have done in elementary school. Some memories would easily fit into certain years, while others would kind of hover around in the area of "elementary school" or sometimes in "that time before I went to London for vacation, and after I became friends with so-and-so." If the specifically placed memories sat on shelves numbered by year, which themselves were stacked one above the other, I could draw the larger vertical brackets for elementary school and middle school and adolescence, etc. where the hazier memories could sit, and they could wait out there in the margins till I remembered what year they were from. Meanwhile the other memories would be packed in tight like socks in a drawer or spread out loose like a silk shirt, depending on what the number of memories for that year was, and if I guess the shelves were drawers instead, and if sometimes one large, thin memory covered the year pretty well.

But that would be kind of fun, right? If we wrote down all the years we've lived and tried to make notes to indicate any broad swaths of memory we've still got like that we played cards after finals in 7th grade with people we didn't know very well and it was surprisingly fun, then we could see all the blank patches and the times that were supersaturated with memories (I think colorful balloons for some reason). It's getting weirder for me to realize that when I remember middle school, I only have 3-4 overarching, go-to memories, and if I rely on those and think, right, middle school was those 3-4 things and a whole lot more, I'll forget the whole lot more slowly over time and then one day they won't really be there. It's weird that I know a whole year happened, probably with a lot of stress and anxiety and joy and awkwardness, and I can only remember one thing from that whole year of experiences, like somehow a year's worth of stuff was condensed into one memory, or bits from that year fell out until only that bit was left. I'm not sure if one averaged out memory or a random sampling of one memory from a year's worth is better.

Just now I was trying to review my Spanish, and one of the sentences I was supposed to translate reminded me of this moment in class, and it might have been Spanish class, but I'm not really sure. But it was a moment when I was sitting with 3 or 4 people, and we were supposed to be working as a group to do some I think holiday or unit-themed assignment that was slightly embarrassing. I think the assignment was to use the new words we had learned to act out a scene where someone is single and looking for a boyfriend/girlfriend, and everyone else is vying for their attention. For some reason someone in our group ended up volunteering us to present our scene from our seats and act out the dialogue. I remember I was supposed to convince our bachelor that I was the best choice, while my other classmate was supposed to present himself as the better choice, and he said something about how he made a lot of money because he or his parents were doctors, and then I'd said something about how money doesn't matter, and that I cared more, and the person who was choosing between us ended up being very diplomatic about it in sort of a weird way, because he spoke really formally, like he was weighing job offers. He said something about how he could see the advantages for both, but in the end he chose one of us (can't remember who) because (I can't remember why, but it sort of made sense. It had something to do with how because the other guy or his parents were doctors, they must ___, so he would rather ___ and so he chose __). I just can't place this memory. I'm not really sure it was Spanish class, because I don't think I knew enough Spanish to say that exactly, and I'm not sure my classmates knew enough either. But I just can't imagine in what other class or situation this might have happened. Anyway, maybe I'll remember sometime. I don't think I've recalled that memory in years, so there are a bunch of holes. I don't remember whether I was in middle school or high school, or who my classmates were, except by gender and generalized personality, or who my teacher was, except that she announced the assignment with joy and some people groaned, and she might have clapped her hands together to get our attention to announce the last assignment of the day.

I'm starting to think actually, that it might have been in this Chinese class I was sitting in on, because we might have known enough Chinese to go through that scenario. I also just placed the classroom and now the group and everything is fitting together, because we were sitting near the door and there weren't that many students in the class, and I'm pretty sure we had just learned majors and occupations and how to say that a job was lucrative. We definitely learned how to say doctor. Mystery solved!

Sometime, I'll do the listing the years and extracting the memories from each exercise. It could be almost like a bookkeeping thing, just for memories and for fun.

poor memory

I recently read a collection of short stories in a book I borrowed from a friend, called The Color Master by Aimee Bender, which was by the way very good and beautifully written and strange and interesting and really enjoyable to read. It's also great for reading in installments, as many anthologies are. But anyway, this post is not about that book. Actually I went from writing a short review of the book (which is why I won't be writing much about it here) to writing a blog post about something else, to writing about things that writing my blog post reminded me of, and somehow I kind of came back to writing about something that came up while I was reading the book. So on we go:

Something that Aimee Bender’s story, Wordless, reminded me of. That we are losing our words. Sounds very dramatic, but more specifically, I definitely know that I am either losing my words or have always had trouble grasping for the right one. My mind is a total jumble, and I am 57% convinced that it is because I got so caught up in trying to master the art of multitasking. Now I’m just terrible at everything. Just kidding, but I became a lot more inefficient with doing simple things like just remembering what I was talking about, or where I was going, or what it was that I meant to google just now. Where did I last see my glasses? Did I leave them at the store? And once in middle school, the biggest temporary memory dump I’ve experienced so far: once I was walking down the hall right after class, with my backpack on and all my books in arm, surrounded by the streaming traffic of hurrying teenagers, when suddenly I stopped and noticed this gaping blankness in my brain. And I thought, “Where am I supposed to go? Where am I supposed to go?” and just stood frozen in the middle of this hallway-intersection, feeling this growing panic as I stared at the floor, trying to recall where I was going, and then where I just came from, what class? And I couldn’t even remember what class I had just left. It was like I didn't even have any recent memories that morning, and all my memories of other school mornings came flooding in as a little tick tick slideshow, and I could only preview them one at a time and tick them off, no, no. I remembered one morning in math class, the teacher at the front of the class, and the light that came in through the windows. But it felt a little too distant just then, that math morning, so I accurately identified it as “not-this-morning”. Then I thought ok logically it had to have been first period, my first class. So that would be Spanish. It was Spanish last year too so I can’t be wrong. 

And that makes sense since I’m in this hall, so what’s my next class?

… 

… 

... 

… 

… 

ok I can figure it out, it’s either A-day or B-day classes. No idea which. Ok, narrow them down. What classes do you have? 

… Spanish. 

… 

...

...

... English.

...

uh ok… what are common broad subjects that people teach? Math, science. Do you have science. Who is the science teacher. All I can think of is the teacher I didn’t have in 6^th grade that everyone else had. Oh my god. How am I not remembering? Is there anyone here I know? Who’s in my classes? I recognize her!!  She doesn’t know my schedule. People are leaving, the bell’s going to ring soon, everyone's leaving, there’s no one here I know--that’s a 6^th grader. I'm the last person here. I better head to some class and just hope it’s the right one, or by now it’s just--I need to check them off one by one by visiting them. But where are my classes? I have no idea where ANY of my classes are, or who the teachers are. Then someone on the brutal and scary member of school staff comes hurrying over in a huff, whistle dangling around her neck, “What are you doing? What are you doing here? GO TO CLASS.” And I’m like, ok ok! sorry I! I can’t remember what class! Mumble- swivel, start walking. I. oh my god.
Math class. 

It was math. I think that was the class I forgot, and I finally found it and walked in and was super relieved. Maybe the memory was frightened back into place by the staff person. This was, by the way, definitely well into the school year, and I had long ago stopped looking at my printout schedule by then (and didn't have it at school when I happened to blank out). I still don’t know what happened then that made me forget everything so fully and ridiculously. 

Anyway, there was a lot more to this post, and if you remember, this post was part of another post that I’d meant to write on a different subject, but I kept hopping to concurrent topics that later were maybe less concurrent, and now we’re here. And I didn't even really talk about what I'd set out to talk about in that first sentence up there of the second paragraph. Or third sentence, maybe. Also there’s a new poll! Hooray! The old ones got so dusty they lost their vote count, ha. Oh wait, no they didn't. They usually do by now. Hmm.

Also, do you title posts or things that you write before or after you write them? When it comes to blog posts, I usually title them after, and it's fun because I find that after all that rambling, I actually sometimes still have a somewhat cohesive topic by the end anyway. Or if they have nothing to do with each other, they suddenly do in the title and then it's cohesive.