It's amazing how some things stay in our mind no matter how many years go by. When I saw this article about child abuse I could remember in almost perfect detail a book I read about five years ago. "A Child Called It" is a book chronicling one of the most severe child abuse cases of a young boy in California who was abused by his alcoholic mother. As I said earlier, when I saw this article on USA Today all the horrible details of the book came flooding back to me, and made me wonder why certain events become engraved in our memories forever while others slip away.
Maybe it was the severity of the issue that keeps it so close to the front part of my brain, or maybe it's the connection I feel to the book after meeting a child who was abused in elementary school. Why then can't I always remember what I did three holidays back? I'm sure this celebration was filled with laughter and many memories, but unless I see pictures it's nearly impossible to recall the exact events of that day. And trust me, I don't have some kind of twisted selective memory.
I think whenever we connect to an idea, event, or other element on a personal level it embeds itself in the back of our brain until it is later triggered by even the faintest hint of the same idea. This one spark then ignites an entire string of stories and memories that all stem from my original thought. It's crazy how we immerse ourselves in one concept and watch as it branches off into dozens of other ideas.
When I thought back to the book "A Child Called It" I immediately forwarded to thoughts of my old neighbor, which led to a bbq the summer after my first year in high school, which branched out to high school, and now reminds me of my times spent here at SMU. (Even as I'm writing this you can see how scattered my thoughts have become as I bounce from one subject to another).
Maybe it's just how we're programmed that we can't help where our thoughts stray...
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