Silly Stuff About “Memory”

Some things are so set in my memory patterns that they don’t seem able to be overridden. Spelling certain words, of all things, will always, ALWAYS, be with the same pattern:

• Mississippi – emphasizing each ‘i’ – with a certain cadence.
• Encyclopedia – according to the rhythm of the Jiminy Cricket song.

Other things I'd hope would be long gone from memory will come back to me, in their entirety, with just a slight reminder: The whole “brusha brusha brusha, get the new Ipana” song, for example. (It’s dandy for your teeth!) They stopped making Ipana toothpaste in 1970-something but there it is, playing itself over and over in my head long after I can remember what pulled it out in the first place. (Wait! According to Wikipedia, Ipana is still a leading toothpaste in Turkey. Who knew? Maybe I’ll have a use for that song someday after all!)

I once won a trivia game with the knowledge that ‘007’ stands for “license to kill” in James Bond-speak. It just popped right out. That's valuable information, in storage there...

I wish I could remember my own son’s phone number, but I can’t. I can, however, still remember my high school locker combination and my college Student ID number. I certainly don’t have a need for them any longer, but there they are, taking up what I’m sure is prime real estate in my brain.

I had some friends years ago who were from Texas and were mortified every time their retarded adult son started talking about ‘wet-backs’ – which he did as soon as someone mentioned Mexican food. Very politically incorrect, but there it was. Indelibly linked subjects in his memory. Pavlovian, stimulus/response sort of thing. (Mark has a bunch of those that just drive me nuts! Probably he does that for his own amusement, because he can always trigger the same response in me then too, and that is just too ironic to pass up.)

I will always cry, automatically, every time I hear “Pomp and Circumstance” or the “Wedding March,” whether I hear them in an emotional context or not. The theme music from Disney’s “Dumbo” movie does the same thing. They are simply stored in my memory under “things to cry about” and so I do.

I can’t remember a dream when I wake up, but when I go to bed again the next night, with the bed, pillow, darkness, position etc. all a duplicate of my ‘dream state’ I can recall exactly where that dream left off. And dreams aren’t really even memories, as such.

Is it just me?

Silly stuff.