Rafting down Memory Creek

In spite of the apparent calm that "a stroll down Memory Lane" intends to convey, I have always thought of that kind of reminiscence more like whitewater rafting trip: there are certainly pleasant stretches of transparent little ponds where you can see the bottom of the river, but there are also harrowing moments once you reach the actual rapids where, if you do not fear for your life, at least considering the risk of getting a good gulp out of the stream.

The first major obstacle to blissful memories is the fact that memories are, by evolutionary reasons, inaccurate: memory has evolved to be helpful, not to be precise. For instance, each episode that we remember is normally tagged with a "pleasant" or "unpleasant" label, pretty much like the blogs in this post, so that you can evaluate it without having to go through the whole episode in your memory. However, this tagging not only leaves out a lot of detail, but it actually distorts the memory, so that pleasant memories get slightly embellished (potentially removing some of the negative parts) and vice versa with the bad ones.

Photo: EzhilanG

However, there are things that are undoubtedly unchanged: the TV shows and the movies you watched, the books and comics that you read, the songs that you listened to, you favorite toy cars, dolls, stuffed animals have all been shut in boxes at your parents' house for the good part of thirty years, so what could be a problem with them? Of course, we all change and thirty years is a long time, so the things that we liked back them are not appealing anymore: the novelty is gone, they are not on fashion and, in most cases, they have been absolutely surpassed by their modern counterparts, so much so that even our kids would not find them enticing. The entertainment and marketing industries have managed to flood us with superstimuli that simply make our mementos pale in comparison.

The third haunting element of the excursions into the past is the number of ghosts you encounter. In most cases, the memories of the places and the people in our childhood stay frozen for a long time, becoming more and more disconnected from the places and the people that they have become over time. Perhaps the bully in your class, which you still fear today and would not even dare to reach to over WhatsApp, has evolved to be a very friendly store clerk and father; of the vacant lot where you used to play with your friends is now an apartment building housing tens of families. However, in your mind they are still the same they were back then, and you can only play back your memories and remember how you scratch your knee on that rock, or the day you got an elbow to your ribs because an "improper" response. To some extent, they are not that different from the imaginary friends that some kids have: they are based on real people and real places, but they have lived in your mind a different live than in the real world, so they eventually become completely disconnected.

In the turbulent time of COVID, I have tried to reach out to some of the old friends to catch up with them, know how life has treated them and, eventually, rebuild the bridges that once existed. However, I have approached the task with a lot of caution, because I did not know how much and in which direction they might have changed. I did not want them to become the shattered heroes of my childhood, people to whom I ascribed almost superhuman powers like super-friendship, super-sense-of-humor or super-playfulness, only to find out that they have become plain old gray humans.

As one might expect, some of the people I reconnected with had changed very little, while some others had nothing to do with the former selves. I am grateful to have recovered a couple of them and to have at least received news of others with whom I did not connect so well. But it has been a lot of effort trying to keep my expectations at bay. I hope you have a nice weekend.