It's a pretty big playground!

Over 35 years have passed since I was in 6th grade, yet still so many memories of those days are vivid in my mind as if they happened just a week ago. How does the process of archiving some memories from my life and deleting others work? What is the selection criteria that generates a special place for some faces, yet allows others to fade away almost instantly. I attended a Catholic School, and to my recollection most grades were always divided into three classrooms in which there was rarely more than 30 students in each. I cannot remember the exact number but at the most we never had more than 90 students enrolled per grade. A while back I took the time to see how many names of my childhood classmates I could remember. Of the probable 90 faces I could only remember the names of 60, which included my own. From this I might concluded that my mind is no more than 66 percent effective at archiving and later retrieving memories from this part of my life. There is a probable 34 percent content which is either lost, heavily guarded, or never got filed in my head in the first place. I am sure that if I went to my mother's home and pulled out one of my yearbooks, my immediate response would be "oh yeah, I remember him or her!" Interesting how my mind does this magical trick of hiding previously relevant information as easily as laying a dark blanket over my memories.

I extended the experiment by trying to account for how many of their faces I could remember while reading their names from the list I had previously made. However, I soon realized that this was not a challenge since as soon as I would say their names a quick visual image would pop up in my head to match. Apparently, if I am able to remember their names, then I have a 100 percent ability to remember what they looked like too. I am curious to discover if the same holds true if someone would mention a name which I had originally not remembered on my own. Will I still have the same visual experience of remembering their face too? After all, it is kind of embarrassing when I have attended a class reunion and one of my childhood friends walks straight up to me and asks "remember me?" just to find myself digging deep into my head and discover I did not file their name or image anywhere for instant access at the time. In all fairness, those "Hello My Name Is" sticky tags should go accompanied by a picture of the individual when they were younger because people can change a lot in 30 years!

I got an email yesterday from a childhood friend that I had not heard from in over 30 years. As I read her note, instantly my mind flew back in time and her super cute face popped up as a reminder of someone I not only was close to, but also had a boyish crush on for a while. This might not mean a lot since I think I might of had a boyish crush on almost every single girl in my class at one point or another. However, her memory is more special to me than just that of a crush. With the image of her beautiful face and long dark hair I also filed a memory of someone that was kind, real, and very nice to me. God only knows how many times I might of annoyed the life out of her for reasons that I now cannot even remember, but on my end, in my mind, she holds clear in my memories as someone with a great heart, a beautiful personality, and all the makings of a lovely human being. After I finished reading her email, my mental conclusions from one single note were that I had accurately filed away the precise description of this person. That to me my dear friends is amazing! How in the world was my young, immature, and mostly ignorant mind able to file such a precise collection of attributes for so long?

I think I might have an answer to the above question. I want to be fair and quickly make the statement that every rule has its exceptions, so what I am about to say does not apply 100 percent of the time. I have learned with time that who we are as children, and who we will become as adults could be much different in the end. Boys and girls have a chance to grow up and make of themselves better or worse individuals than their childhood persona. I for one would like to think that my days of pulling hair and making silly faces are no longer part of my once childish rituals to get the attention from the opposite sex. Equally, I sure hope that my caring more about me than others phase is also a thing of the past. However, I also have learned that deep rooted into our persona we have certain qualities that stay true with us throughout our entire life. In essence, a good heart is a good heart. Youth in itself does have a special kind of innocence that seems to fade away with life experiences, but the sentiment, the emotional goodness of an individual keeps well as they age. I feel strong about this concept on the positive side, yet I am not totally convinced it is true on the negative end of the emotional spectrum. I say this because what might seem like a bad, cruel, or mean hearted child could simply be a reflection of their immaturity and lack of life experiences at the time. If this is true, then these other children that might not project a wealth of emotional goodness could actually mature and eventually find a much more centered personality as they grow up.

These are some of the things that I reflect upon when I am given the opportunity to play catch up with dear childhood friends. In a simple email I sometimes am able to find hours of reflection. The way people write, the things they say, and how they respond to your own inquiries, it all adds up to so much more than words and sentences and answers. In almost everything that we do there is usually something meaningful to think about. As a father, I love being able to rediscover childhood friends and memories because they sometimes serve me as a guide into a lot of my own children's personalities. My life alone is not enough, it does not have all of the clues and the key that I need to be able to find and unlock the vault that contains the answer to figuring out my children. There is a lot more to it than just me and them because the degrees of freedom that affect human behavior are much greater than what resides in my own home. As I have heard before, the world itself is a very large playground. It makes absolutely no sense to stay indoors instead of coming out to play.

Dad