Speaking of Reminders . . .

Early Tuesday morning I was drinking coffee and reading the Wall Street Journal after finishing quickly the way too Easy Sudoku puzzle in the Billings Gazette.

Melinda Beck wrote an article entitled You Must Remember This: Forgetting Has Its Benefits. Naturally when somebody else confirms one of our long held but not quite proven ideas we take notice. She goes further than I do when I reassure friends and relatives that there are a lot of things that we don't want to remember anyway. She suggests that the more competing memories we forget the less the brain has to work to recall a specific one. Hmm. "Forgetting frees up brainpower for other tasks."

I still am amazed at the very specific and seemingly almost meaningless memories from very long ago that get called to my conscious attention at odd times, often when I detect a certain smell. Maybe the fact that it had never been called up before accounts for its clarity. For example: maybe recalling is like reconstructing a puzzle very quickly and then breaking it down. Some of the pieces get lost or put in the wrong place the more you do this. Hmm.