Sometimes I feel that our memories are really not based on any sort of factual occurrence. They are things, events, that have been reshaped by other events, by other wishes or desires, by other memories, by other people. They are reworked to fit into the parts of your brain in which we hold them. They are sometimes altogether different than the original reality.
My one sister thinks she was born in another family. She has no memories of when she was young. When others of us remember a funny event (like the time by brother put crackers in my Marge Simpson hairdo I was so proud of when I was a junior in high school). My sister was there - we have pictures of her there yet she doesn't remember that event.
But with every event in our lives, we look at it and say yes, it was a fun event or it was a crappy event or it was an event that seen through someone else's eyes, is way different.
My children remember things that I totally forgot or in such a way that I look at them and wonder how they ever came to that conclusion.
Did you know there are three parts of memory?
1. The first part is when you receive the memory then process it or register it.
2. Second is when you store it.
3. Third is the retrieval or recall or recollection of said memory - the part when you look back into the stored information area in response to some cue in the process of an activity.
Why do I bring this up in a blog post now? No clue. Or maybe it was hearing the song "The Way We Were" as I was listening to Barbara Streisand tonight while paying bills. It has been like a stuck needle in my brain.
