It’s a legacy…of sorts

 I have the gift of an extremely associative memory. This is not the photographic memory that everyone talks about. That one has its own advantages. An associative memory is limitless. It is one that takes the visual, auditory, and olfactory and pegs something else to it as if it were an actual hyperlink to something unrelated.

For example, if I am driving westbound on Interstate 84 in New York State and approach the Port Jervis exit just before the Pennsylvania state line, a very detailed conversation that an old friend and I had over the cb radio decades ago rises to the surface. This is just one of a thousand examples.

My two boys have it too. About 10 years ago, my family and I were driving out to South Londonderry Vermont for a camping weekend. Chicago’s Saturday in the Park was playing on the radio. It reminded me how my friend Karen loved ice cream, and when the part of the song says, “Man selling ice cream…” she always sang that part of the song as kind of a queue meaning, “Now I want ice cream.” This conversation happened 100 feet west of the rail crossing in Chester Vermont on Route 11. TO THIS DAY, Liam will say just as we drive through this spot, “Dad, man selling ice cream.” Both boys demonstrate this unique system of memory pegs all of the time.

We often demonstrate it to each other, to show how acute it is. It is the reason why when in a conversation I can make an odd turn in the direction the conversation is going that probably will not make sense. A hazard of knowing me? I apologize to all the kindly folk who have endured this. You have to admit though, it keeps things interesting…maybe.

Associative memory is more than an anomaly it just happens to be a technique taught in Kevin Trudeau’s Mega Memory Course. I was very pleased to find this back in 1999. In this course, he teaches you to build what he calls a tree list and then when you need to remember something, you assign it to one of the memory pegs in the tree list. After a while, you develop the habit of automatically assigning everything to a peg and can remember anything. You basically create an event that has the memory peg and the item you want to remember. Doing so creates a mini-story that you cannot help but remember.

In all honesty, I have never been disciplined enough to make the habit stick. It’s ok though, I have my random, involuntary, never-know-when-it-is-going-to-strike version of associative memory. It is my legacy, or whatever you want to call it, it is mine.