#72: "Persistence of Memory"

I have absolutely no recollection of the 1970's. I just wasn't around for enough of them to have memories. It was the time before words came into my life, so it's completely lost.

My memories of the 80's are all over the place. My brother was born in 1981, and I don't remember him in much of his first years of life. There's a story I think I remember: my mother loves to tell people that when my brother was little and learning to walk in an old school walker thing (she calls it a search-and-destroy vehicle) that I pushed him down a flight of stairs. I honestly have no memory of this event in total; I think I remember it being an evening when my grandmother was watching us but not paying that much attention. I may have opened the gate to the stairs, or I may not have. Memory is like that: I could simply be creating that which I've been told many times, or it could have really happened. I'll never actually know.

I have random memories from an elementary school that no longer exists, in a town that barely does. My time in middle school was as awkward as it should be for the age I was, and every now and again I'm reminded of something that happened there. I think the last time that happened I was at my parents house packing up some of my old baseball cards to bring to New York. Trading/collecting was a big thing around my middle school in the late 80's/early 90's, and i remember one student that stole a bunch of cards from me and went completely unpunished. I thought I had enough evidence - the cards he had were from a very limited edition and were the only ones i was missing from said edition, and that student had opportunity and motive - but it wasn't enough and I moved away before I could get them back (but after we had fisticuffs about it). 

I've tried really hard to erase lots of memories over the years. I've tried to mostly forget high school, even if I still have some friends from those years that I still talk to rather infrequently. I've tried to purge old relationships so as not to be reminded of such poor decisions (both by myself and by others). Yet at the same time I've tried to reconnect with undergrad friends in an attempt to regain memories that I've lost to time and age.

These days we have a great equalizer for memory. Something that won't ever forget what we've done and will continue to use it both for and against us until there's no more money in either of those. It reminds us over and over of the good and the bad of our past. I'm of course talking about Facebook.

There's a part of Facebook that shows you your post history each day. Anything you post on a particular day shows up in the "On This Day" list. It showed me something today that I didn't need to remember. On 16 May 2011 I found out for certain that I wouldn't be staying in Washington. For my entire grad school career all I'd wanted to do was get a gig in Washington. This was the day that I found out I'd be saying goodbye to all those friends and colleagues, many of which I haven't seen in person since. 

I don't always need an outside source to remind me of how far I've come, or where I came from. I won't forget finding out I was leaving DC. I won't forget what that felt like (I was crushed), no matter how good things have become since then. Some memories will always be there to remind me.