Holly Hox, Forget Me Nots

People are too modest when it comes to their own self-worth. Either that, or they're just excessively insecure. Whenever discussing an old acquaintance -- a friend, classmate, co-worker, whatever -- that they may have not seen in a long time, they always follow whatever they have to say about that person with the completely unnecessary qualifier of "Oh yeah, so-and-so was a really cool kid, but they probably don't remember me..."

They probably don't remember me, I doubt they still know who I am, I'm sure they've forgotten all about me. I hear this stuff all the time, but I don't see how it can ever possibly be true. At least, I hope people don't actually believe this. Hopefully they're just being paranoid. They'd be best served to stop being so hard on themselves.

Who knows, maybe I'm the weird one, maybe I'm just so much more observant and retentive than the average person. But I really doubt that. Who are all these people? And how are they (allegedly) so forgetful? I don't buy it. I wager that most people are like me; ergo, most people remember almost everything.

I can recall most things about the people I've come across in my life: names, faces, likes and dislikes, allergies, funny anecdotes, embarrassing moments. My mind is like a bear trap, snapping shut the moment I meet you; there's no escape, you're in there for good. I suppose certain things may get a little foggy over the years, some of the more obscure things like shoe size or Zodiac sign. But for the most part, the mere passage of time won't make me forget that your entire existence.

Sometimes I'm amazed at the clarity and vividity of my memories, so bright and sharp, as if they were painted in oil pastels. But then I remember that's just how our memory banks work. Sentimentality is subjective, but physiology is not; your neurological system is about as likely to forget a person, place, or thing as your cardiovascular system is to suddenly forget to make your heart beat. You're hard-wired to seize these moments and not let go. Give people some credit, they haven't forgotten you. Nothing short of brain damage (and I suppose a night out binge drinking, but that's a whole other story) would allow that to happen. And odds are, they're probably capable of telling you a lot about yourself -- more than you'd realize. Simply recalling that someone is, in fact, alive and does, in fact, exist is so rudimentary, it's the absolute bare minimum. Unless they're just that callous and cold-hearted (or perhaps, that inattentive), people have retained much more about you than you know, surely capable of reenacting entire conversations you've shared, as easily as they could recite their own phone numbers.

And I don't play favorites with my memories. Length of association, degree of friendship, level of familiarity -- I've noticed that it tends to have little to no affect on how intensely I remember someone. Best friend, prom date, playground bully, kid I met one time at a house party -- it's all about equal to me. I even have deep recesses of my mind that I save specifically for lasting memorials of random strangers I see on the street. Maybe I'm overlooking one or two instances (and I doubt that I am), but I can't think of a single time when someone's told me that they knew exactly who I am and that I wasn't able to completely reciprocate the favor. I may specialize in the minutia of day to day life, but I'm not alone. People are like sponges, soaking in everything they come in contact with. I know that everyone is touched/entertained/haunted by the thought of the things they've seen, just as much as I am.

The misconception that "they probably don't remember me..." is weak and groveling. It's a cop-out, because unless we're dealing with an Alzheimer's patient, it isn't true. You're doing both people a disservice; you're short-changing their ability to retain very fundamental information, and you're short-changing your own ability to make lifelong impressions on people that have met you. Haha, get confident, stupid.