onefixedstar | Why I keep a journal

When I was twelve, my parents took

semiotic_trader and me to Florida for two weeks. While there, we did all of the usual tourist things...Disney and Epcott (this was before MGM) and visiting my snowbird grandparents and so forth. The two weeks fell over March break, but as the school board stingily alloted us only one week off, we had to miss a week of school to go. To make up for this, my grade five teacher gave me several assignments to complete while I was gone, one of which was to keep a journal. I hated the idea (it was the principle of working while on vacation that I hated, not the actual journal writing), but, good little student that I was, I dutifully filled it in. When I got back, I handed it in and got it back with comments and promptly tossed it in a drawer somewhere. A few years later, I came across the journal while cleaning out my desk. Slightly intrigued, I flipped through it...and realized just how much I'd forgotten about that trip.

I have a very good memory. In some respects, I have a freakishly good memory, as several of my friends will attest to. (Note to the friend who threatened to have me killed because I remember too much: I don't remember anything you tell me anymore. Honest.) But even with a really good memory, I forget a lot. And well, stuff happens. The brain is a delicate organ, as anyone who has read Oliver Sacks knows. (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a fascinating book, but it's also very, very scary.) I want to remember my experiences as more than a blur and an impression. So I write stuff down. Lots of stuff, most of it probably uninteresting to many of my readers (though I try to screen out the most irrelevant bits). I'm not sure if I'll ever go back and reread this stuff, but I find it comforting to know that it's there.

ETA evidence of the failings of memory. I said that I was twelve and in grade five when I went on this trip. I am convinced that I was twelve because I remember thinking that my parents would have to pay adult rates for me everywhere we went. I am convinced that I was in grade five because I remember the teacher who gave me the journal assignment, and she was definitely my grade five teacher. But I didn't turn twelve until grade six. I was eleven in March of grade five. Therefore, somewhere, my memory has failed me. I suspect that I actually was eleven and in grade five when we went, and that what I actually thought at the time was that it was good that we were going now, before I turned twelve and my parents had to pay adult prices for me. But I'm not sure. And that's why I keep a journal.