Memory Triggers--by Bryan F.
As I was listening to a song while working out at the gym the other day I found myself suddenly back in 1966, in seventh grade, sitting in my assigned seat in the cafeteria at Arrowview Junior High School, where I attended seventh grade. We were only allowed to get up once during lunch to return our heavy metal lunch tray to the lunch lady. We were then required to return to our seat without stopping to talk to anyone. These strict rules were the result of an uptick in violence on the campus that included something called chain fights. I was new to the Westside and had never observed one, thankfully, but that did not diminish my fear of such an idea; that I might stumble into one just around a corner on my way to class.
All of those memories came rushing into my head as I listened to the Buckinghams song, Kind of a Drag, while cycling at the gym in 2020, fifty-three years later; my sixty-five-year-old self suddenly twelve again. The school administration had the good sense to play the local AM pop station over the intercom during lunch to soothe the savage beasts and as a kind of olive branch for the draconian rules, maybe. This song was often played along with other hits of that time such as Herman’s Hermits, Mrs. Brown you’ve got a lovely daughter. These two songs, in particular, send me back to my seat in the cafeteria the same way that Eric Burdon and The Animals, House of the Rising Sun, and the folk group The Rooftop Singers, Walk Right In, put me in the backseat of my parent's car, my Mom behind the wheel. She would play the pop station, whereas my Dad was more likely to be tuned in to the country station, which I didn’t like as well. I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the lyrics in House of the Rising Sun, at the age of ten or eleven but I knew I liked it a lot.
The music sends me back in time in much the same way that my olfactory memories can have me standing in my Grandmother’s kitchen, smelling the flapjacks and syrup and the sizzling bacon in the cast-iron skillet.
Some of my memories of the past that I consciously try to avoid are those associated with my more recent caregiver days with my Mom. A commercial on TV showing a blood monitor has me at her bedside testing blood and injecting insulin. I’m glad I was available to make those years softer for her but they took a toll on me and I’d rather remember her at the beach with all of us, or at my Grandma’s house on Thanksgiving squatting down and tasting the pie she’d just dropped on the floor and my Grandma losing it, bursting out in laughter. There’s a picture somewhere, as my Grandma always had a camera nearby, ready to record such events for posterity. Whether it appears here will depend on my level of energy to sort through the snowdrifts of pictures on the utility table set up in my living room and spilling into boxes on the floor. A scene that resembles my own mind. Getting the sorting and digitalization done is important in order to preserve them for the family members that show little interest in them now. The task, however, is fraught with triggers that like a minefield must be traversed with care to manage the flood of memories that are inevitable.
I’ve been rewatching Mad Men on Netflix. The mostly, accurate depiction of the 1960s, transports me back to my childhood in a generic way that doesn’t cause me the potential pain that a family picture might. The wall decorations, furniture, and lamps just make me happy and homesick for my youth. The fashions and hairstyles similarly have a positive effect on my emotions. It did bother me that the cords on the Venetian blinds were wrong in Don Draper's office, but I respect their effort to get most things right. Even their cigarette smoking comforts me because it’s familiar. The haze of blue cigarette smoke dancing through the film projectors light in a movie theater was a work of kinetic art back then, as I gazed up at it from my seat. Yes, smoking was allowed in movie theaters in the mid-sixties. I remember lying on the floor in our living room when I was young and watching the dancing patterns of blue smoke from my parent's cigarettes above me in the dimly lit room or through a late afternoon column of light from a window.
I have always been visual. The color orange causes me mild anxiety in certain hues. Not like a pumpkin which is a natural version, nor the oranges of autumn that I find soothing, but rather the color of a Gremlin car, popular in the 1970’s, or the orange that outlines everything when a rare but deep depression rears its head for me. I’m sure that the last one is a manifestation of some memory like Sybil’s purple crayon and her scribbles inside the box.
I don’t have a perfect memory, but I am the come-to-person, in my family when something needs remembering, much like my maternal Grandma was. That kind of memory/mind can be difficult to live with until you realize how to manage it. I don’t think my Grandma ever did, though; her anxiety was always very high. I listened to her, though and mentally recorded everything she shared for posterity. Some of it I wish I’d never heard, but the rest made those small pieces worth the burden.
Everyone has memories and triggers, but my experience of others is that they are not always as clear and defined in their memory and sometimes absent or maybe a better explanation, unavailable for recall. A recent encounter with a childhood friend at my Mother’s memorial; a person I spent my entire childhood with is one example. I said to him: "Remember when we climbed the stairs up to the Boulevard Market’s roof where those little apartments were located and what we did up there when we were eleven years old?". Him: zero recollection, even after I explained in detail. Or: "Do you remember those plant cuttings the owner of the nursery would give us when we would wander through there looking at the plants?". Him: No recollection registered.
A more positive example of recalling is when one of my brothers will ask a question about this or that, or when did that event happen and I start with; "Well it was when we lived on 50th st and Dad brought home that greyhound dog that ran away a week later and...", and I’d go on from there to their delight, to explain in detail the answer to their question. My family appreciates and values my good memory and it’s one of the things that I inherited from my Grandma and in which I find some of my value as a person, friend, and family member.
So we don’t always share the same matching details of the exact same event or point in time; a very human phenomenon in my experience. I do not claim to know much about the science of memory, I only know my experience. I guess there is confirmation bias and some of those fancy terms that explain differences in recall. I’m not saying my memory is the perfect record, just that like a few others, I have a lot of them that are always near the surface and ready to jump out and make me cry or smile.
Walk Right In
Walk right in, sit right down
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Walk right in, sit right down
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Everybody's talkin' 'bout a new way of walkin'
Do you want to lose your mind?
Walk right in, sit right down
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Walk right in, sit right down
Baby, let your hair hang down
Walk right in, sit right down
Baby, let your hair hang down
Everybody's talkin' 'bout a new way of walkin'
Do you want to lose your mind?
Walk right in, sit right down
Baby, let your hair hang down
Walk right in, sit right down
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Walk right in, sit right down
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Everybody's talkin' 'bout a new way of walkin'
Do you want to lose your mind?
Walk right in, sit right down
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Daddy, let your mind roll on
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Gus Cannon / Hosea Woods
Walk Right In lyrics © Peermusic Publishing
I remember these songs, too and love your reflections on them. I think my family has pretty good recall, my mother did, too. Between her, my, brother, and sister, now deceased, we could solve most family questions about what happened, when. I'm writing a lot about the 60's and 70's, too, just to help my own memory.
ReplyDeleteI always love you recollections, Bryan. A trip back in time for me, too.