Memory Lane

Just the other night, I had a strange memory. I happened to get up and look out the window during a snowfall. The street behind us hadn't yet been plowed. This caused me to recall Mr Workman who worked at snow clearing for a nearby town where I used to teach. I remember his daughter saying how he'd be so anxious for it to snow, so they would call him into work.

The thing is, I don't know Mr Workman, and his daughter never told me that. It was my daughter who told me that Jodie had relayed that piece of information to her. Maybe I remembered it because I had once taught Jodie before Thesha ever know her. Thing is: why would I retain a useless bit of trivia like that — for about 15 years now?

Both you and I have heard that we only use 10% of our gray matter, but I have recently heard that it's not at all true, that our brains get quite full. They get so full that at a certain age the only way to learn new stuff is to forget old stuff. Maybe that isn't true either, but it was said by an expert/scientist, so I tend to give it some credence.

Question: if my brain is so darn full, why it would choose to hang onto that rather useless tidbit, especially in light of all of the things that I do forget?

That leads me to another memory prompted by reading State Street today. He remembers crying after bloodying a kid's nose. Of course, that brought a somewhat similar memory of my own to the surface. Well, it wouldn't be anyone else's memory would it?

Preston and I were arguing about something or other, and I guess we put our dukes up, and I smacked him in the jaw. That startled me so much that I turned and ran away. I guess if I hadn't, I would have had to fight some more, and I knew that I could handle him, and I didn't really want to do it.

I suppose that I am a pacifist at heart and was even then at the tender age of nine or ten.