memories

for some reason tonight i started thinking about memory. specifically, why some people are better than others. see, most people think i have a good memory, and maybe i do. it isn't quite photographic, but in some ways it can be pretty damn close. some things i never remember- math formulae, conjugations of spanish verbs, faces. but others i never forget. give me a book to read, one that i actually enjoy and am not just reading for a class or something, and after i finish, i will be able to tell you everything that happens, all the little scenes, almost word for word. anything with history, i learn it once, it never leaves me. if you know me well, you know that i tend to be good at games like trivial pursuit or jeopardy. my brain is crammed with millions of obscure facts, like that Abraham Lincoln signed into law the first income tax, and then died on april 15th, tax day. additionally, if i try, i can remember entire events that happen to me. it's kind of fun, seeing someone for only like the second time, months after i first met them, and knowing exactly what they were wearing, what they ate, said, etc. but i digress. what i was thinking about tonight was not how good my memory is, but why it is. no one really knows how memory works, but it's becoming more apparent that we probably remember nearly everything we ever learn. basically, if we concentrate on something enough to move it past simple short term memory, we know it forever. it's lodged somewhere in our brain until we die. which, as i see it, means that it is simply a matter of finding this information. i think people with good memories actually don't have that much better a memory than anyone else- it is just that they can, for whatever reason, find where they store memories better. my mental filing system, in contrast to most of my physical life, is just a lot more organized than everybody else.

also tonight, i took a personality profile test, just for fun. it was on one of those online matchmaking services. but when i finished the test, they said that they couldn't find a match for me, that i didn't fit any of their profiles well enough. so now i wonder if that's a good thing or not.