Ken Hurley
Remember the Maine!
Today, I went to sharpen my pencil, but I forgot the pencil. I hope this isn’t the onset of whatever that forgetful malady is. – kgh
I never forget a face, but in your case, I’ll be glad to make an exception. – Groucho Marx
In loving memory of memory lane, let’s try to remember that popular song title from the off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks, that ran for a record-breaking 42 years (1960 to 2002) at Manhattan’s Sullivan Street Playhouse. What was the name of that song? It was originally sung by Jerry Orbach and later became a hit by Ed Ames and again by Harry Belafonte and The Brothers Four. I even performed the musical inside a planetarium with their beautiful night sky optics in full array. I was the mute. Try to remember the name of the song, and if you do, please tell me.
I remember sloshing around inside the womb wondering where the remote control was. My biological mother was a smoker and I wanted to turn it off, but I could not find the remote. Is this an example of my malleable cognitive quirks, or a creative license that allows me to make stuff up? Which reminds me, I once had my poetic license suspended for making bad puns.
The human mind is a tricky piece of gray mush constantly recording, indexing, and organizing moments that shape our lives. Memories help define who we are. Our personal identity, our choices, what we do, how well we do it, are captured in the seahorse-shaped hippocampus where we can selectively retrieve them with a smile or a grimace. Memories are flawed and often reshaped through the creative process that come from biological signals, emotional interpretations, and shifting perceptions.
I don’t actually remember breathing second-hand smoke in the womb. Surprised? I have womby amnesia. I do have two distinct early memories. We were visiting Montauk, a historic hamlet on the easternmost tip of Long Island’s South Fork. My mother’s lips were bright red, her hair was auburn, and she wore a turquoise blue dress with a thin white belt. The dress fell mid-calf and flowed in the wind as she walked on the beach. That’s my earliest memory at about three years old. A year later I remember going to the adoption agency in NYC to “pick-up” my new sister, Lisa.
These early memories are not complex stories and may be a hybrid construct of faint impressions, actual fact, and stories told later in life by others that I remember. They are fragmented emotional snapshots. However, I verified both memories years later. My mother still had the blue dress. She was also able to confirm my description of the yellow room where we waited for Lisa to be delivered to us.
As we grow, our minds begin to curate a collection of favorite memories. These are the memories we return to in times of stress, loneliness, or transition. Happy stuff. Unlike ordinary, mundane recollections — such as which type of taco we ate last Tuesday — favorite memories are supercharged with positive emotions and are often associated with milestones, deep connections, or personal triumphs.
When I was 17 I hitchhiked around America with a high-school buddy. I have many happy memories about those 2½ months on the road. The trip began in June on a highway in Hackensack, NJ and went through Wilkes Barre, Des Moines, Lincoln, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Denver, Reno, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Bakersfield, Needles, Albuquerque, and Youngstown, and ended in NYC. Many other stops in between, including being arrested twice for hitchhiking. Once in Nebraska. Once in Colorado. Nothing bad happened. The people I met were friendly and even eager to help us have an enjoyable journey.
My favorite memories are heavily influenced by my brain’s reward system. Yes, there are occasions when my brain rewards me. Thank you, brain. (Did you know that the brain is the only organ that named itself?) Anyway, I enjoy the rewards because they offer joy and connection, and release a euphoric rush of dopamine and endorphins. This delightful natural chemical cocktail signals my hidden hippocampus that this specific event is worth keeping. They remind me that I have the capacity for happiness and resilience. They are active resources that keep mental health — healthy.
My memory can be triggered easily by sensory inputs like smells, sounds, touch, taste, or sight. A drift of elegant perfume can resurrect the exact memory of the person who first brought it into my life. As a young boy, I was taken to Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center where Leonard Bernstein conducted the Young People Concert Series. I was impressed by Pictures at an Exhibition. It was the first time I heard it. When I hear it today I can easily associate it with that experience. When I’m asked “What’s your favorite meal and why?” I reply it was at the Tupper Lake Inn where I ate the most delicious cheeseburger following a five-day 50-mile hike through the Adirondacks eating mostly freeze-dried backpacking food. I was 14. I’ve enjoyed many gourmet meals since. None more memorable than that cheeseburger.
I have memories of where I was during major news stories and other personal events. Examples are: the assassination of JFK (in school), the Challenger explosion (in my office), the 9/11 attack (in my office), John Lennon’s assassination (long story, but I was there that night), the OJ verdict (Taco Bell), the January 6th insurrection (beach condo), my first Big Mac (Little League), falling off a boat into the Long Island Sound (Long Island Sound), among many others.
I have lived long enough to accumulate a small universe of memorable joy. My memory holds some typical delights: first kisses, the arrival of children, some corporate successes, the freedom of living in an RV as I traveled across North America, hiking, boating, and songwriting. Decades ago, it was the uncontrollable giggles of school friends. Today, it is the beautiful, chaotic squeals of my grandchildren’s screams of joy.
I like to believe my memories are accurate reflections of my history, but I know they are fragile, prone to distortion, and may actually be faulty. This malleability is driven by several of my cognitive quirks. One known error is source misattribution, which happens when I remember a piece of information correctly but forget where it came from. For example, did I dream it or did it actually happen? Another known problem with my memory is my hippocampus confabulation, where thoughts and memories get discombobulated in my mind. Sometimes I think I unconsciously fill in missing gaps in a story with plausible details to make the narrative feel complete and coherent. I prefer good stories in friendly casual settings! My brain wants to prioritize a cohesive, sensible, entertaining story over strict, absolute factual accuracy. The “truthy” skeptics among us may be giving me the skunk eye right now.
Sometimes dreams are memorable but usually no longer than the morning after. However, some dreams are memorable for a lifetime. Here’s one of my memorable recurring dreams from many years ago. I am being chased through a thick old-growth forest by an unidentified angry posse of people who want to do me harm. I’m running as fast as I can through the forest. I can feel that I will soon become breathless and run out of energy. As I reach the edge of the forest there is an open flat rocky plateau whose edge is about a thousand feet above a deep wide canyon. The enraged mob is close behind me. As I run, without missing a step, I reach the edge of the plateau, I leap, tuck my knees in cannonball fashion, and wonder what will happen. To my surprise, I fly! I soar throughout the canyon. Blue skies overhead, and what looks more majestic than the Grand Canyon below. I look back at the huffing and puffing hostile mob who are left behind on the plateau. The end.
I’m told this is an optimistic dream that goes from intense anxiety to delightful liberation, and suggests an innate resilience. The ability to rise above the drama and stress of others and leave their useless negativity behind on the cliffside while I enjoy a much grander perspective — makes me smile. I have since done many cannonballs off a diving board into a pool. Not once could I fly.
I was going to make another point but I forgot what it was. Oh, yes! The need to forget. To forget is not necessarily a cognitive failure but an essential, highly adaptive function of a healthy brain. So, I can pride myself in how much I’ve forgotten. I would be locked up in the looney bin if I remembered every single detail of every single second. TMI.
Forgetting is part of the memory curation system. By removing the infinite incessant noise of daily life, such as where I parked my car three weeks ago, my hippocampus opens space for more relevant memories, which allows me to focus on what matters, think abstractly, synthesize ideas, and make better decisions.
Mnemonics are intended to help diminish our forgetfulness. But do they work? An example: While hiking you nearly step on a snake whose colors are red, black, and yellow. Is it a poisonous coral snake? Or a non-venomous milk snake? Is the memory aid, “Red on black, friend of Jack.” Or, “Red on yellow, beware fellow!” How often do you forget memory aid mnemonics? Here’s another, HOMES is a memory trick to help remember the names of the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. PS: I’m not a fan of uppity lakes. Looking at you, Lake Superior.
Forgetting is vital for emotional well-being and psychological healing when we deal with trauma, embarrassment, heartbreak, and grief. The emotional intensity of bad memories helps with human resilience. Forgetting allows painful experiences to dull over time. Without the ability to forget, the human mind would remain trapped in a perpetual state of emotional distress, making personal growth, forgiveness, and moving forward nearly impossible. You know, loony bin stuff.
Yet there is a problem with forgetting too quickly. Societal forgetfulness creates a desensitization to public tragedies, which poses a significant barrier to substantive reform. When communities forget horrific events too quickly, collective apathy often replaces the urgency required to implement meaningful preventive measures. This pattern of short-term public memory and subsequent stagnation is evident in mass shootings.
Do you remember the first mass shooting broadcast on live television? It was the University of Texas at Austin clock tower shooting on August 1, 1966 where 14 people were killed and dozens were wounded. Too young to remember? Ok. In the decades since, these acts of violence have proliferated across public spaces, including schools, places of worship, workplaces, grocery stores, restaurants, homes, military bases, parks, trains, and more. Do you remember the October 16, 1991 tragedy at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, which resulted in 23 fatalities, yet failed to produce lasting systemic change?
Even highly publicized events suffer from diminished long-term memory. The April 20, 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado dominated the media for months and inspired Michael Moore’s Academy Award-winning documentary, Bowling for Columbine (2002). Despite this intense scrutiny and the subsequent identification of at least 70 copycat attacks linked to Columbine, comprehensive legislative solutions remain nearly nil. The sheer frequency of these tragedies raises a critical question: has the ubiquity of mass violence desensitized the public to the point of legislative paralysis due to our memories’ ability to dim and forget?
Yet there is a beauty in the flexibility of memory. Sometimes I don’t want to forget. I want to hold on to the moments that give my memories pleasant meaning. Yet without any effort from me, my hippocampus knows that forgetting the clutter and pain that would otherwise be a burden is a good thing. Sometimes I disagree with my hippocampus. And, I would tell the hippo as much, if I could remember where he is — because good and bad memories help shape us into ever-evolving, resilient humans.
Please forgive me if I have omitted a favorite memory. Memories fade. Sometimes too quickly. Few people remember yesterday’s sunrise. Yet, people desperately want to be remembered. Want proof? Headstones.
Here’s one of my favorite song lyrics from “As Time Goes By,” in the movie Casablanca, “You must remember this …” … Ummm. Ahhh…. Hmmm…. Line please.
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