 |
| Are these smart people, people with good memories, or both? |
Barbra Streisand only had it half right.
Memories do indeed light the corners of your mind, but they
can drive you crazy, too. We all have those moments of wondering why we
remember our sixth-grade best friend’s phone number but can’t remember what we
did yesterday.
And then there are those who remember everything. And I mean
everything.
A 2010 film, “Unforgettable,” documents a man
from La Crosse, Wisconsin, who has been dubbed “The Human Google” by his
uncanny memory of his own life. Brad Williams has been diagnosed with the rare hyperthymesia,
also known as superior autobiographical
memory. Marilu Henner of “Taxi” fame has a similar kind of memory and
she appeared with Williams on a “60 Minutes” story about the topic. Only
20-some people in the world have been found to have this ability.
The film is on Wisconsin Public Television on Friday, May 1.
There are probably those who are amazed by that, in a good way.
I can’t think of anything more horrible than remembering every day of my life.
To some extent, I speak from experience. While my life has
been far from tragic, no one has good things happen to them all the time. And
it’s only in recent years that I realized that I have a really good memory –
though nothing like Brad Williams or Marilu Henner - which I both treasure and
curse.
“You’re the one who can’t get Alzheimer’s,” said a friend
who herself worries about dementia because of a family history. “You’re the one
who remembers everything.”
For most of my life, I thought memory was this thing we are
all born with like an arm or a leg. And that, like other body parts, it might
get beat up or worn out but everyone’s basic raw materials were always the
same. Then I grew up and lived
most of my adult life in other places, where the memories I shared with friends
didn’t go back very far.
And I worked in newsrooms, which are filled with
people with spectacular memories. Brad Williams himself is a radio news host. I learned my craft from people who were
encyclopedias, some of whom unfortunately took important reference material to
the grave because they never bothered to write it down.
I, and my memory, fit right in with those folks. We all
thought we could kick butt on “Jeopardy,” though it’s hard to know if those contestants
are actually smart or just have spectacular memories or a combination of both.
As the years went on, I seemingly had a better memory than
my non-newspaper friends about things we did over the years. But let’s just say
there are particular things they did that I didn’t that might have clouded
their memories as these events were originally happening.
Then I moved back to where I grew up. Suddenly I was
continually sitting in rooms of people who were there at the very same time
things happened when we were little kids, and had no idea what I was talking
about. The storyteller in me loved this – I had a whole new audience for tales they had no memory of.
I often wondered if maybe I just made that stuff up, but
then I found others in my family who had the same memory. It made me realize
that memory isn’t like an arm or a leg – it’s like a birthmark, everyone has
one and they’re all different. Eventually I realized that my youngest brother
and a few older cousins also have these good, detailed memories, and that because
of the age difference between us all we could be like the old griot in “Roots” and
tell the oral history of our generation of the family.
That’s the good part. The rest? Do you really want to
remember every slight you experienced in life? Because the actual memory isn’t
the only thing there like a movie playing in your head, so are the feelings that went with it. They clog my mind
in ways that still sting a little, but mostly as an irritant because I’d rather
remember where my garage keys are.
Yes, boy in kindergarten, I’m still kind of ticked that you
told Mrs. Jabs that I was up and wandering the classroom while she was out of
the room when the truth was I was the last to sit down and there were actually
no chairs left in the room. No, boy in
third grade, I’m not still mad at you for saying to once-skinny me, “Don’t you
eat?” I’m still intrigued by the memory of a mean thing a girl did to me in
kindergarten and how, in retrospect, it was already the pattern for the mean
girl she remained.
I used to test my memory, too, when I was a kid. I’d take random
moments to say, “OK, I’m just going to remember what I am doing right now and see if I can remember it for the rest of my life.” So
the memory of me getting a drink from the bubbler in fourth grade while wearing
a green polyester pantsuit remains.
But jeez, where did I put my library card?
Yet memory can be a beautiful thing, too. I remember my
brothers’ first steps and words (sorry, Mom, they began with a “D.”) I remember
the beautiful indigo color my favorite blue corduroy coat turned under the street
lights when my family walked to church on a snowy Christmas Eve when I was
about 4 years old. I remember the touch of my uncle’s hand as he held my chin
and stroked my cheek at my grandpa’s wake. Remembering old locker combinations
and other details from youth helps create good Internet passwords, so there’s
that too.
I’m lucky. I’m not harboring evil memories that hound me.
Just this odd documentary of my life that pops up in the strangest ways
sometimes, randomly edited and maybe with an R rating for language.
Too bad there are no outtakes that can appear on a DVD.
Because then someone else could watch and tell me where my garage keys are.
