Total recall: the people who never forget | Hacker News Reader

Total recall: the people who never forget

theguardian.com

5 pointsmhb2 comments

But when it came to remembering details that did not relate to her personally, Price proved no better than average. She recalled the date the Iran hostage crisis began because she had made that detail part of her personal narrative of the day it happened. School, she says, was “torture” for her – she couldn’t remember facts and figures...Other details, if they didn’t relate to her or her interests, were forgotten: once, she was asked to close her eyes and recall what her two interviewers, who she’d spent several hours with that day, were wearing – she couldn’t....Price’s memory is as selective as yours or mine, storing the things that she finds important – she is just a good deal better at retaining and retrieving those memories.

Since Price seems to be adept at recalling how people/events/things made her feel in the moment, if I had to guess she probably relives the bad (e.g. harmful critiques) on a regular basis.

I can't say I'd want that ability.

On Tuesday 16th of August, 1977 I ten years old and was in Porthcawl, on the coast of Wales, staying in a permanently sited caravan with my sister and future brother-in-law. The announcement of Elvis' death was on the black & white 11" portable TV running on a car battery with a loop antenna. My future brother-in-law was a big Elvis fan and was devastated by his death. I only vaguely knew who Elvis was.

My face was all covered in scabs because on the Saturday prior I had been riding my yellow Raleigh Chopper bicycle down the hill in Pentyrch a little too fast and the small front wheel began to wobble crazily and I face planted hard, at speed, and looked like a victim of domestic violence. I face planted right outside the house with the swimming pool just before Windy Corner, four doors down from where my friend Malcolm lived.

My sister, 10 years older than me didn't want me to go to the caravan because she was afraid people would think she had been beating me.

Tuesday morning was overcast. Grey skies for as far as the eye could see. Though the afternoon was incredibly hot and close and dusty with a strong wind, which is why I was in the caravan to hear the announcement and not outside running around and doing whatever it is 10 year old kids do when they are at the beach without adult supervision.

On Wednesday the 17th me and my friend Malcolm who wore a blue and white striped t-shirt met a couple of guys camping in the dunes in a putrid orange two-man pup tent with frayed guy ropes, one of which had snapped and been replaced with blue nylon string. They were short on food. I took two pounds of my own money, after lying to my sister about why I wanted the money, which is a different story, and I bought a loaf of white sandwich bread & some butter and we sat outside the tent and toasted the rounds of bread over an open campfire in the dunes while the two older boys, who were in their late teens drank some cheap beer and smoked roll-up ciggies they had scrounged up. I impressed them with my ability to roll a tight pack with the Rizzla greens and the classic cigarette rolling machine with the orange plastic and cheap metal, press-fit ends that would never stay closed properly. There was a trick to using them that my older brother had taught me on the same day he taught me how to safely handle a rifle and reload and chamber another round with only your left hand.

On Thursday the 18th I purchased an orange sled for 4 pounds that let me ride the steep sand dunes with the other kids. And there are more stories to tell about that. That sled finally broke, years later, in October of 1981, when I would ride it down the scree slopes on the cliff coasts of Penarth.

And I also keep a journal of every day things and thoughts and events. Though I don't often refer back to it unless it is a moment of "huh! I think I already thought/said that some time ago."

Memory is a strange, strange thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com