The "Never Forget" Story

It was an ordinary day. Or at least I think it was. Sometimes when I prepare to write a story I have trouble remembering some of the facts that I plan to include, so I have to do some research. That usually includes talking with my wife or maybe calling one of the kids to help me remember better all the facts that I need to tell the story and tell it truthfully. Sometimes even have to quiz my 89 year old mom about something. My mom is someone who will call me at 6:00 PM to talk and at 8:00 PM will call back again, not remembering she had called 2 hours earlier, but when I ask her about something that happened 50 years ago, she remembers every detail as if she is reliving it as she speaks. Bet some of you are the same way. Do you write notes to yourself all the time as I do. I have a tablet in each of our cars just in case I remember something I forgot or have to do and know I will not remember it if I don't write it down. 95% of the stories I have written are stories that came to me on the spur of the moment and I wrote them down so I didn't forget them. Probably many more I could tell that I haven't, but because I didn't have a tablet with me, I forgot them. If only my memory were better, but it never was that good. I taught school for almost 35 years and had probably over 6,000 students in that time. I may remember maybe 50 names from that time. I can always remember a face, but the name sometimes escapes me. Hey, even when I was teaching I hoped to know all the names of my students by the end of the school year. Recently I read about a social media specialist who has started a new service called "4SquareAnd7Years Ago". After you join, every day or night you must make notes about your day such as where you ate, drank or socialized and send them to his service. Each morning the service will find what you did precisely one year earlier and email you a summary. Naturally, you must belong at least a year before you will get any summaries. I assume the longer the service operates they would give you updates from the previous year as well as two or three years before on the date. Something like memory engineering. Would be pretty neat to send photos, interesting facts, emails you receive, friends that visited with you, important conversations, books and magazines you read, and even stupid stuff you did. Then, a year later they would send you a diary of your life from the past. But, then again, there are some days that maybe I would rather forget. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.