I was thinking about what to write tonight and I came up with a good subject. But I can’t remember what it is now. It was interesting – I was just talking this week about some of the ways my mother told me she used to remember things. I never understood at the time, but now I find myself using the same tricks. I guess I must be getting older.
I have always been fascinated by memories and how they work. You see something or hear something and a bit of biology re-arranges itself so you can immediately recall it. I remember one cart accident I was involved in when the policeman asked if I could recognise the driver. He was the only other person there, but to be honest I could not have picked him out of a line-up. My brain had not recorded his face.
I can remember the case of the stolen biscuit. There were two of us in the house and we shared a biscuit. It was the last of the pack. When the biscuit owner came back the other person swore they didn’t eat the biscuit. When I spoke to the other person that shared the biscuit alone they were sure they were telling they truth.
In our study last week I heard that one sign of honest responses to police investigation were differences in stories. People actually remember things differently. We are not computers, our ability to record memories is good, but not 100% accurate. I’m sure we adjust memories a little.
It must be getting near Christmas – “It’s a wonderful life” was on today. I have watched it every year for about 20 years. But today I saw something new in the film that I had never seen before. When young George Bailey wonders why the old chemist is upset the camera flashes to a telegram telling him his son has died. For the first time today I saw that his son had died from flu. I guess it might be the circumstances we have been through that made me more sensitive to that.
Odd things our brains. I guess what we surround ourselves with affecting our memories and our behaviour is pretty obvious, but I wonder whether we take deliberate steps to adjust our surrounding.