A Writer's Memory

A short time ago, I posted about mind games I play with myself that I attributed to my writer's brain. Things like listing attributes of particular items off the top of my head, or cataloguing rock and roll songs, or even bands, into categories. The things we do when bored, eh?

Well, the other thing that I think many writers have is a weird memory. Not all writers I've spoken with do, but an awful lot of them, it turns out, remember minute details, conversations pretty much verbatim, and strange factoids. We can be killers at Trivial Pursuit.

I didn't realize not everyone remembers things that way. One time I was in the car with some friends and a song came on the radio. Someone said, "Who sings this again?" And without thinking, I gave her the name of the band, the year it came out, what grade level we were in in high school when the song hit the charts, and what I was wearing in my most vivid memory of listening to it back in the day. She gave me a very strange look and said, "Do you always do that?"

That. Shortly after the incident, I began to realize that not everyone remembers details like the fact that "The Addams Family" aired in Chicago on Friday nights and starred Carolyn Jones as Morticia. Or that the first time I ever saw Mark Hamill, he was playing Laurie Partridge's boyfriend, Jerry, on The Partridge Family. Then I saw him on General Hospital as the nephew of nurse Jessie Brewer. Well heck, going back to The Partridge Family, the first time I saw David Cassidy, he was playing an angry, diabetic kid on Marcus Welby, MD. I remembered both Mr. Hamill and Mr. Cassidy because they set off the "Cute Guy Alert" in my teeny-bopper brain.

I didn't think I was particularly weird because Jim can do lots of this, too. (Maybe he should be writing?) We can pretty much name every teacher we had in grade school, and what class we had with them. I haven't quizzed him recently, but I can also name every teacher I had in high school, including student teachers, what class each of them taught, and what grade I was in when I had them.

I know Sister Rosetta introduced me to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" in Cultural Heritage class, and I still remember her final exam where we had to identify the first movement of "Winter". Also, Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", and a painting of Etruscan flute players.

Then there's the factoids: Alexander Graham Bell's wife was deaf; Pistol Pete Maravich scored 3,667 points during his college career at LSU (people who went to high school with me should smile at that one!); Cat Stevens wrote the Tremeloes' hit "Here Comes My Baby"; Liszt used to bring Chopin to parties with him because Chopin was the chick magnet... All sorts of strange items stuck away in my head that I don't always know are there until they pop out when the topic arises. Or when I'm watching Jeopardy. (Did you know that Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to Edgar Allen Poe as "The Jingle Man"? Got that one from my English prof freshman year at U of I. Also, Lord Byron had a club foot.)

Maybe there's a ton of you out there thinking, so what? I do that all the time, too. If so, perhaps YOU should be writing. I didn't think of it as being connected until I read an interview with Judy Blume who mentioned that she had a memory that hung onto details indefinitely. She then proceeded to describe her first day of Kindergarten, what she was wearing, what the teacher was wearing, and other particulars. Some might say that we all remember things like that because they're big days in our lives. And some of that may be true. But I remember (and I bet Ms. Blume does, too) things from days that weren't so important. Like my favorite nightgown when I was nine years old. I inherited it from my sister when she outgrew it, and I was so happy when I got it. Or how I used to make paper airplanes constantly and hid all the best-flying ones in the bookshelf that held our Encyclopedia Britannica. 

So what have you got stored away in your own memory system? Brilliant flashes of spectacular days? Wistful glimpses of days long gone? The mating habits of preying mantises? It's all good. And if you write, well, it can be even better!

(By the way, the top picture has nothing to do with this piece of writing - I just thought I'd throw that one up there since I hardly ever give it any "press time"!)