Memory Leak
Recently, my dad asked me how it is I remember the details of the past so well. He was specifically referring to my memories of the Granada Hills branch of the L.A. Public Library that I recently described in my inaugural Shelf-Life post. I can’t really explain this, except to say, that is how my memory has always been. It seems perfectly normal to me. And yet, I often feared that my memory would fail at some point. This was part of my motivation to start a diary in 1996. I figured if I wrote something down when it happened, it wouldn’t matter if my memory failed, I could always refer to my “official” record of events. In this regard, my diaries are reference books, and deserve a place on the shelf beside my copies of Merriam-Webster’s and Fowler’s. Over the decades, it is rare that my memories don’t align with what is in my diaries.
A few weeks ago, I was sick in bed. Apparently, despite getting my annual flu shot, I had the flu. I was certain this had happened a few times in my life, most notably in 1978, 1997, 2018, and now, this year. Two of the occasions turned out to be fruitful, literarily. Two others were busts.
My memories of the 1978 flu are vague, but I do recall it happened during the famous blizzard of 1978. I think our whole family was down with the flu, but it may have just been me. I was just six years old and never thought too much about it. My most vivid memories are of watching David Hartman and Sandy Hill on Good Morning America in the mornings when I normally would have been at school.
Looking back on this as a parent, it must have been scary. Several feet of snow had fallen, and we were essentially trapped in our house, all of us sick, and if any one of us needed to go to the doctor, it would have been difficult. I know that a similar situation today would have stressed me out.
It was when I was down with the flu in 1997 that I read a book that led to a kind of literary big bang, with the universe of authors that I read rapidly expanding. The way I remember it, I was down with the flu, while reading Age of Wonders by David G. Hartwell. The book was a kind of launching-off point for many other books, and while I was sick, I went through many other books that I first read about in Hartwell’s book, including The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester, Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg, and Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick.
In my memory, I lay in bed, feverish, but eating up the hours of the day with these books. The books were a kind of anodyne for my illness.
Except, it turns out that is not what happened. As I went back to my diary for 1997, I found that I did, indeed, take a sick day on September 23, 1997, the day that I finished reading Age of Wonders. As I wrote:
Finished Age of Wonders this afternoon. Really enjoyed it. It caught me and tossed me back into the wonderful world of SF. In fact, now I’ve got some classics to read. Went to the Iliad Bookshop today and got Dune by Frank Herbert, The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg, Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick, and To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer, and Rogue Moon by A.J. Budrys.
Now in my memory, I spent the next several days in bed getting through at least a couple of these books, but looking at my diary, my memory is at once shown to be… leaky. The next day, September 24, for instance, I wrote the following:
After more than 200+ days without rain, it rained today. In fact, I could hear the rain trickling down in the middle of the night—and could hear the wind blowing the blinds. Still, I was up early enough to beat all of the traffic into work.
Subsequent entries show me in the office every day for the rest of that week. So much for my “remarkable” memory! But it does go to show that one of the reasons I started my diary in the first place has paid off.
In 2018, by the way, I was down with the flu for more than a week. This, being a mere 7 years in the past, is much clearer in my head, and indeed, the documentary evidence backs up my memory in this regard. When I got the flu, I was reading the 3-volume Autobiography of Mark Twain. When I finished that, I needed something to distract me. I’d read the first two “Jack Reacher” books by Lee Child, so I started on the third book, and over the course of a week or so in bed, I got through 4-1/2 more Reacher books. This was great because the book distracted me from the illness. That isn’t always the case.
For instance, a few weeks ago, when I got sick, I took to bed and all desire to read had left me. This is always a worrying sign, but I was just out of it. I wanted to sleep through the illness. My few attempts to pick up a book were quickly thwarted by my inability to focus. Fortunately, while I was sick for about a week, there were only two days that I was mostly in bed.Despite a reputation for a good memory among friends and family, it is a memory that has sprung leaks and is likely to be as fallible as any memory is. My superpower is likely less about my memory, and more in my recording of the daily events of my life in my diaries and the consistency that comes with that. Still, there is a natural bias in my diary that slants things in my favor. Although I try hard to be neutral about the facts, and I’m sure that in some events I’ve described, there will be people who were there who will disagree with my portrayal. In these cases, I reserve the right to be smugly correct.
Did you enjoy this post?
If so, consider subscribing to the blog using the form below or clicking on the button below to follow the blog. And consider telling a friend about it. Already a reader or subscriber to the blog? Thanks for reading!
