Don’t forget to remember...

I’m a bit embarrassed. Y’see, you’ve caught me at quite an inopportune moment. I was going to write this letter on something important, I’m sure of that. The only thing is... I can’t remember what I was going to write about. You don’t happen to know, do you? Wait! Hah, got it! Memory, that’s what it is.

It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? For a start, we’re not quite sure where or what it is. We know roughly where to find it – temporal lobe, second left at the hippocampus – but after that, our sat-nav breaks down. And while we can come up with some pretty theories to explain mostly how it works, we still haven’t got all the kinks worked out.

Déjà vu, for example. I, myself, have it from time to time. Some say it’s a neural quirk, adding a notion of familiarity to the novel but I’m not entirely convinced. Some mornings I wake up thinking what an odd dream I just experienced, that it could never happen, only to be left slightly spooked when it comes to pass a few weeks later. It’s something like having my very own Oracle of Delphi behind my retinas.

Of course, remembering things before they’ve happened is strange in itself but there are still oddities even when causality flows in the proper direction. Despite being the foundation of my current academic achievements, I can remember very little of my days in primary school. Fair enough, it was a long time ago. And yet, I remember vividly Mrs. Gulliford shooting me the most poisonous look after I yawned in class. This one, inconsequential memory is the only thing I can pluck from the murky mists of that past. So far, this pearl of synaptic-firing has been of no use to me whatsoever and I can’t envisage a future when it ever would. But it is implanted so firmly in my consciousness I know I’ll never forget it, even to my final days.

That’s the strange thing with memory, or one of many at least. We don’t remember what is important, what is useful: the bones of the wrist before an exam, the interview time with a prestigious company or the phone number of that girl from Metric. Instead, our heads are filled with junk: the word “custard” in five languages, the number of pecks in a bushel, Ann Widdecombe’s birthday.

But, then again, I might have this all wrong. Obviously an ordered and detailed memory is useful where exams are concerned but life is more than a test. Maybe there is some gatekeeper in our mind, more acute and astute than we could ever hope to be. Maybe this subconscious bouncer only retains what really is important. If I were ever examined on my life, I know I’d never get 100%.

Memory is one of the things that make us who we are. Even in Imperial, a personality isn’t formed by learning a textbook by rote. It’s crafted over time through myriad interactions with those we know, those we love, those we hate. We are a thousand conversations. If we couldn’t remember them, who would we be?

I can’t remember what kind of bike I was riding when I got lost in Pontypridd but I can remember how glad I was to see my Dad again, even as he gave me a rollicking. I can’t remember what they asked when I came here for my admissions interview but I can still feel the thin film of sweat that coated me as I walked out of the room. I can’t remember what film we went to see on our first date but I remember perfectly how my girlfriend looked, stood there in Gloucester Road Station. This memory-demon has better things to worry about than facts and figures, dates and times.

In fact, I can’t even remember the date properly. I know it was roughly a year ago. Almost exactly a year. Wait, actually, it was a year ago to... Oh dear!