Quirks of memory

[skip.knox]

My son got me a subscription to Marvel Ultimate three or so years ago. I've read some new stuff, but mostly I re-read comics I've not read in many a year. My collecting years ran roughly from 1974 to 1985, with plenty of back issues from earlier in the 70s. I have many fond memories, but I also have memories that surprise me. Once such happened yesterday.

I was reading Man-Thing, in the stretch by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik. In one issue, the human who became Man-Thing was briefly changed back into his human self. Someone called to him. Sallis!

I read that, and my brain dutifully said, "Ted Sallis".

Now, that issue is from 1974. I have not read it since it appeared. I can't image that I read Ted Sallis' full name very many times, yet there it lay, like a forgotten treasure in a lost cave, until suddenly one day it burst forth. Not, I admit, a particularly big burst, but there it was, even so.

Brains are weird.

 

[BearBear]

Remembering things you long forgot is one thing, but remembering things you never knew is far more interesting.

 

[Prince of Spires]

My brain does that as well sometimes (though being born in '82, it never serves me memories from the 70's....). It just offers up random bits of trivia I had completely forgotten about or never even knew I knew them. Can be quite handy when playing quizes...

Brains are indeed very weird. They become even weirder when you start comparing how your brain works with how someone elses brain works. At least I've found that I always just sort of assumed other peoples brains funtioned similar to mine, but that's not even close to the truth.

 

[Plinto]

I've had this thing for the past thirteen years or so which I call "dream fragments." At any given point during the day I will suddenly remember a random dream I had years and years ago. Not even a full dream, just bits of visuals. Always a different dream. And I never really know how old the dream is beyond whether it's recent, old, or very old. It's more of a feeling. It probably happened a few times a year at the start, and these days it might happen once or twice every other year.

Also, I've realized that I've started to forget a lot of things that I thought might have been immortalized in my younger years. Friends or family will talk about something that happened and I will have zero memory of it, or it will take some intense digging and details to bring it back. Time is strange, brains are strange. The whole thing is bizarre.

 

[JBCrowson]

Smells and adrenaline prime (increase the efficiency) of memory creation, making later recall easier. Try asking people you know for their earliest memories. The proportion who give either very exciting or very bad / scary examples is way bigger than it ought to be given how often those kinds of events actually happen.

 

[pmmg]

Brains are also unreliable. How many things are not really how I remember them, and how many things do I remember that maybe never happened, or happened to someone else? I dont know.

I am pretty good at remembering stories, and detail from things I used to be interested in--like a character name from a comic book. But....heck if I can remember where I put my keys.