Volume 1, Number 7

December 1, 1995

A column by Ed Rochelle

While driving to work recently, I started to sing a song I remember being popular while I was a kid. I'm embarrassed to tell you that the name of the tune was, "Abba Dabba Honeymoon". I was amazed to realize that I had remembered all the lyrics. Just a few days before that incident I had found myself recalling the names of some teachers of mine from my years in P.S. #42 and #104. The images of Mrs. Wheelright and Mr. Charlton, filled my head as if I had been in their classes just yesterday. I remembered that one of my claims to fame as a kid was the fact that I could repeat the lyrics to most of the songs in the top 40. To top it off, I knew the words to just about all the Broadway musicals of the time. I still can't drive past a field of corn without serenading the cars occupants with a few bars of Oklahoma'. I bellow the lines, "The corn is as high as an elephant's eye...and a little brown maverick..." until my fellow passengers convince me to shut up. "Marsee doats and doesy doats" is another song that I can break into at any time. It amazes me how much unnecessary information I have stored in the memory areas in my brain. Why is it that I can remember my family phone number and address from when I was 9 years old while I have trouble remembering what I ate for lunch yesterday? Some of the data I don't mind carrying around. Remembering the name and phone number of my 5th grade girlfriend still brings a warm feeling to me as does the recollection of my drivers' education class and my first senior license. Being able to recite religious services by rote was a memory feat from my past that I really don't need anymore. Thinking about this triggered memory experience got me to thinking about storage space. I find myself using metaphors to help place new ideas and concepts into a more understanding light. I can use the term disk space to symbolize the amount of memory I may have in my brain. I still haven't been able to quantify it as in number of gigabytes. I don't know of a way to look into my memory files and erase the ones that I don't think I need any more. I've been told that as I get older, my memory will get worse. It doesn't seem to be happening with old memories. For some reason, I tend to believe that those old useless recollections occupy space in my brain and that if I could make more space I could learn more things. I think it is one of the reasons I have difficulty going back to a software program that I haven't used in a while. It seems like I have to learn it all over again. It doesn't take as long yet I still have to experience the old learning curve again. I've always heard lots and lots of talk about how we can make the computer think and act more and more like the human brain. In this case I would like to see my brain being able to act more like a computer in my ability to send unwanted memories or files to the trash can and delete them. This would free up lots of space on the disk' in my skull and make room for all the new experiences that are ahead. Nobody ever showed me the button to delete the files in the hard drive in my head. HowCome?