Buried Deep Within

I was reading Vicki's blog, the one where she talks about taking drama lessons when she was young. She mentioned rehearsing some lines between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Then, from the deep past, all of the way from high school in the mid-sixties, which is sixty years past, it hit me that we had studied a play about those two. I didn't remember the name. The Heiress came to mind, but I was sure that was another play. 

Suddenly, it burst forth from the deep and dank recesses of my brain: The Barrett's of Wimpole Street. Could that be correct? I didn't know for sure.

I checked with Google and found that it was more than a play but also a 1934 movie, based on the play, that was published four years earlier, in 1930.

In a sense one would wonder why we were studying a 1930 play in the mid-sixties, but then I realized that just about all that we studied then was old. For example: I remember Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, and there was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I have since taught high school English, but apart from The Bard, most of our stuff at least a little more current than that.

Just in writing the above, I now recall Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. In 1966, My friend, Stuart, and I drove from the burbs to the big public library in Toronto one fine Saturday morning to do research for an essay on Tess that had been assigned by Miss McDonald. 

My memory is an odd thing, and I suppose everyone's is. These days, when I want a word, especially a name, I often go into stall mode and look a bit stupid. But here I am easily remembering Trollope, Bronte and Hardy, not to mention Wimpole Street, The Heiress and Tess, and Stuart, and Miss McDonald and the trip to the Toronto Public Library. Good grief.

There's a lot of trivia stored up there under my chrome dome, but I never know what it is until something triggers it. I need a nudge, like a question in Trivial Pursuit back in the 80s when people would wonder how I knew some obscure fact.  I have always needed a trigger, like a question, to unlock whatever minutiae is otherwise firmly locked inside.

While I require a nudge, Sue has more of an associative memory. She will somehow make a connection from what is being discussed to something else. Once she reveals the memory, I usually remember it too, but I would never have made the association that she did. Being a linear thinker is likely why, as discussed here recently, that Sudoku suits me much more than Connections, while the lateral thinking Sue, much prefers the latter.

Did this post unlock any old memories for you? What book did you study in grade 12 English? Who was your teacher? Does a certain event from that year spring to mind? What kind of thinker are you? Maybe you would even like to blog about it.