Tag Archives: memory

Same memories different stories

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An interesting fact about the stories we tell over and over again is that with each telling we change the memory. Some stories change very little, either because we have told it so often we remember the recent telling of it as if it was just yesterday. Others may change little because the memory induces such strong emotions that we feel like we are re-living the experience as we tell it. But other stories change quite a bit.

You might ask a friend or family member the question, “Do you remember the time when…?” They do, and when they share their version, that version partially becomes your version as well. “Was it me or you that noticed it first?” A simple question, and then your friend responds and their answer becomes yours… whether or not their memory was correct.

I’m always fascinated to hear a shared story told by two different people, each filling in gaps for the other, each taking turns correcting the other. What does one person consider important that the other doesn’t? What subtle contradictions are there? What is a core memory for both?

One memory, two slightly different stories… two truths, and no lies, even when the stories don’t match. That’s the interesting thing about our memories, they tell us the truth we remember, they tell us ‘our’ truth. And the reality is that the very next time we tell the same story, that truth might just change a little bit.

a Quarter Century of Search

I went to Google yesterday and the Google Doodle above the search box was celebrating 25 years of search.

I instantly thought of this comic that I’ve shared before both on my blog and in presentations to educators.

It is likely that no one under 30 will remember life without Google… Life without asking the internet questions and getting good answers. I remember my oldest at 5 years old asking me a question. I responded that I didn’t know and she walked over to our computer and turned it on.

“What are you doing?”

“Asking Google.”

It’s part of everyday life. It has been for a quarter century.

And now search is getting even better. AI is making search more intuitive and giving us answers to questions, not just links to websites that have the answers. It makes me wonder, what will the experience be like in another 5, 10, or 25 years? I’m excited to find out!

 

If I forget

I have a friend who knows everybody. I’m at a loss to remember the last time I was out with him and we didn’t see someone he knew. Doesn’t matter the city or even country we have been together in: San Diego, Cancun, Philadelphia, and local cities in BC. He likely has 3,000 plus people in his phone contacts, and could probably tell you something personal about 2,500 of them, and easily tell you how he knows the other 500. He doesn’t just add them to a pool of people he sort of knows, he can name them.

I’m not like that. I’m way too much of an introvert, and my memory issue with proper nouns makes it such that if I am at a social event and meet more than 2 people, it’s unlikely I’ll remember their names. It’s hard to remember thousands of names when you can’t remember the names of people you already know. I had an issue yesterday where I was with friends and bumped into someone I have known for a few years, and have had several exchanges online with, including 3 days ago, and I couldn’t introduce them. I had to go to a Microsoft Teams conversation to pull his name up.

The weird thing is, if I don’t see him for a couple months and bump into him again in an unexpected place, and especially if I have the added stress of having to introduce him, it’s likely that once again I won’t be able to retrieve his name. This is one of the few areas in my life where I actually feel anxious. I will even forget the names of the people I’m with when it’s time for an introduction.

The most panicked I’ve ever been in my life was when I was a vice principal and at a ‘meet the parent’ night the principal unexpectedly said to the audience, “And now Mr. Truss will introduce the staff.” I made it through but when one of the teachers I knew best was about 3 introductions away, I was completely drawing a blank and I actually started to sweat. When we were done I told him, “Never do that to me again!” and he was taken aback by my response. He and I did a lot of sharing things out and it wasn’t unusual for him to throw me a task like that, so he had no idea of the terror he put me through.

So if we meet and I don’t know your name, it doesn’t mean I don’t know you. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care enough to know your name, it doesn’t mean I didn’t try. If you give me directions and I ask you to remind me where a main/major street is, even if I travel on it regularly, know that I’m not being lazy, I’m actually in an anxious state where my brain is on overdrive, and the name or your name is not retrievable from my memory bank.

If I forget, please be kind and remind me.

Memory challenges

I was searching for a song on my phone and couldn’t remember the artist. That’s an issue with me, I struggle with proper nouns… not just people’s names, but street names, titles of songs or books, basically any noun that is specific to a person or an item. It’s not a fun thing to struggle with.

I can remember times in my teaching career when I’d look at a kid in my class in June, after seeing the kid every weekday for 10 months, and draw a blank on their name. I know them, I can tell you about their Grandmother’s pet dog’s surgery they told me about back in September. I know exactly who the kid is, but I’m cycling through the alphabet in my head hoping either a first or last name will pop into my brain.

I describe it as when a proper name gets filed away in my head, that file doesn’t get stored with all the other files related to that person or object. My family are used to it, they will try to fill in the gap when I have a long pregnant pause. One example is that we live next to a No Frills grocery store. It has been there for over a decade, and my daughter worked there for about 3 years. But the name will slip my mind and it’s just gone. I can see the sign with the bananas on it in my head but even the words in the sign don’t show up as part of my recall.

The worst is introductions. The closest I ever got to a panic attack was as a VP at a teacher night. My principal said in front of the audience of parents that I would introduce the teachers. This wasn’t part of the plan and I freaked out (on the inside). He and I were both comfortable in front of an audience and he knew that, and didn’t think anything of tossing this my way. But he didn’t know what a challenge this was for me. I was looking at the row of teachers and one name would not come to me. It was painful because I knew this teacher better than most of them. I was wracking my brain for her name from about 3 introductions before hers. As I was introducing the person that was just before her, it clicked and I made it through the list. I begged the principal never to do that to me again and explained how hard it was for me.

My wife knows that, in social situations, if I don’t lead with an introduction, to step in and introduce herself. It usually goes really smoothly because when she does that, I continue on and tell her what the connection is, because I know the person and it’s just the name that’s a blank. And so in this interaction I don’t come off as not knowing the person, instead it just comes off as my wife beating me to the introduction.

I’ve read books about remembering names, and I do all the tricks when I meet someone. And for that first interaction, it’s in my short term memory and I’ll remember the name. But a few days later I’ll draw a blank. The most embarrassing moment is when I forget a name and ask, and it’s David. That’s awful. Can’t even remember their name and it’s my name.

Of all the things that hinder me the most day to day, it’s not names of people but names of streets. Someone will give me directions and throw a name of a common street at me, and the map in my head would not include that street… a street that I might travel on all the time. Google maps helps me out with that though. And giving directions to my own house, I sometimes forget the name of the cross street right in front of my house, and I’ve lived here for 23 years.

I look forward to the time when I’m wearing glasses that will recognize people for me and project their name inside my glasses. Until then, if I blank out on your name, it’s not about you, it’s my issue. I know who you are, I just filed your name in the wrong place.

Oh, and that musical artist I was looking for, it was Tori Amos. I didn’t end up remembering myself, I described what I was looking for and my wife told me her name.

Pronouncing words ‘well’

I drew up in Barbados and came to Canada at 9, just before the start of Grade 5. It was challenging because no one understood my accent, and questioned even if I was speaking English. My sister had the same issue, and after 2 notices home, my mom had to go to the school to tell them that she didn’t belong in ESL (English as a Second Language) classes because she only spoke English.

I struggled a lot to be understood, having a ‘I’m not in Kansas’ moment happening in October, after I was moved in a seating plan. I was placed next to the only black kid in the class. This was comforting for me, coming from the Caribbean where most my classmates were black. On the first day sitting together, something happened that I was excited about so I turned to him and blurted out what I wanted to say in my full Bajan accent. He looked back at me, deadpan expression, and said, “I don’t know what the f*** you just said,” and turned to talk to someone else.

I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Oh man, even my brother doesn’t get me. I’m in big trouble!’

That was a big moment, I worked diligently to break my accent after that. I chose a horrible strategy of saying ‘STOP’ in my head after each word I spoke, to prevent me from linking and slurring words together. This did help me say things more clearly, and made it much easier for Canadians to understand me, but it left me in a catatonic state for seconds at a time. My conversation would be so much slower than my mind, that I would literally get lost telling a story.

My mouth would fall 5,6, even 7 sentences behind my mind, behind my regular speech pace, and I’d get lost. I would be saying a sentence and the next sentence in my brain would be 7 sentences later, and I’d forget how I got there, and even why the story was relevant. I’d freeze, on the outside, but inside I was a hot mess as I scrambled to figure out what to say next. I would literally block out everything in this panicked internal state, leaving the external interaction I was having. I can remember my mom saying to me, after a comatose moment, in her Bajan-Trinidadian accent, “Boy, wass-a-matta wit-chu? You on drugs?”

I still sometimes struggle to find words, decades later, and I know it stems from me trying to talk in a way that was completely alien to me. I joke that I am ESL and my second language is also English.

That said, while my parents tell me that my transition to Canada was really challenging and that I struggled a lot. Beyond that not in Kansas moment, my memories of that grade are almost all positive. That’s a testament to the resilience of kids.

Many aren’t as fortunate as me though, and I was not in a situation where I had to try to learn a whole new language. I have so much respect for people who move to another country and have to fully immerse themselves in a language foreign to them, and often they aren’t given the opportunity to engage with many people who are native speakers because those native speakers don’t make half the effort to converse with them that they have to make.

But going back to the idea of English being my first and second language, many people pronounce words ‘wrong’ or ‘not well’ because that’s the way they learned the words. I still have word choices and phrases that I use, that Canadians don’t use. A simple example, I struggle to use the word ‘beer’ without sounding like I’m saying ‘bear’. It makes for a strange offering when a friend comes over.

While that example is just a wrong pronunciation, when an entire group of people say a word a certain way… it’s not wrong. It’s not miss pronounced, it’s an example of how words evolve over time.


We shouldn’t be too quick to make judgements about how different groups use words in different ways than we do. A perfect example would be, imagine going to the southern states and every time someone said, “Y’all” instead of “You all”, you corrected them and told them they were saying it wrong?

There are many words and phrases used today that we should be far more accepting of. Less judgmental of. The words are being pronounced well, just not the way you/we pronounce them.

Crossing the stage

I lived in Ontario and had to do Grade 13 to finish high school, as was required if you wanted to go to university back in 1986. Recently I was thinking back to my grad convocation and while I remember the grad dance, I have no memory of crossing the stage to get my degree. I remember that at the end of the school year I needed to have a nose operation (it was broken playing water polo and needed to be re-broken to fix), and so I must have missed the stage crossing, or I’m sure I would remember part of it. But what I do recall missing is not my grad ceremony, but a huge year-end party at my friend’s cottage. I was so disappointed at missing that!

I don’t remember putting on a cap and gown, I have no recollection of a valedictorian, no photos with family and friends. Oddly enough, I remember the valedictorian for the school year before, reading his speech at an assembly.

Fast forward to university, and I didn’t go to my grad again. I went to my girlfriend’s grad the year before I was supposed to graduate. I know because the guest speaker was Benoit Mandelbrot, famous for his work with fractals. That was a memorable speech.

But as for me, I took an extra semester, and followed that with a semester off. Then the following year got special permission to take my final courses at a different university so that I could play varsity water polo. Then after I got my final course required I thought I would get my degree, but the convocation date came and went with no notice sent to me. I inquired to learn that I must actually apply for graduation, it isn’t just granted to me.

After my application was accepted, I was told I could cross the stage in the spring of the next calendar year, 3 years after I was supposed to graduate. At that point I didn’t have any friends still attending the university and didn’t bother going back to cross the stage with strangers.

I didn’t cross the stage until I was 30 and graduating from teacher’s college. I crossed the stage again for my Masters, eight years later. In both cases, my wife came to celebrate the event with me. So, I’ve had the experience, I’ve tasted the sense of accomplishment of crossing the stage in a cap and gown and receiving my degree… I just had to wait a lot longer than most.

2nd place

It’s the proudest I’ve ever been as a coach. But we didn’t win the game. I was coaching the York Maverick Juvenile (17 and under) Girls Water Polo Team, in the gold medal game, at the Provincial Championships in Guelph, Ontario. It was a round-robin tournament and we came in first in the preliminaries, and then won against the 4th place team to get to the finals.

The other team, that got second in the prelims, and was competing against us for gold was Ottawa. The Ottawa team was significantly more experienced than us and we were the underdogs when we beat them in the preliminaries. We had never beat them in the regular season, and my girls played amazing, shocking everyone by winning that game. It was the early 90’s so this next point might be off by a little bit, but I recall that with a dozen 17-and-under year old players on each team, Ottawa had about 27 more years playing experience than us. They were expected to easily sweep the tournament after a perfect season. That didn’t happen. My girls played the game of their lives to that point and we went into the gold medal game having beat them once the day before.

A couple hours before the gold medal game I held a team meeting in one of the hotel rooms. We were packed in, and actually had to go into the hallway to demonstrate a defensive move we needed to work on. One of the Ottawa plays they were doing was this pick or screen that I thought was illegal. One of their players would swim away from the play and do this screen, with the sole intention of impeding one of my players covering another player. I thought it was illegal, the referees wouldn’t call it. So we went to the hotel hallway so that we could see and feel what needed to be done to prevent this from working as well as it did in the previous game. We also had an impromptu violin performance from one of the girl’s boyfriends, and the girls were pumped to go play, and hopefully beat, this previously intimidating Ottawa team again.

The gold medal game was intense, it was exciting, and it was nerve-wracking! My girls were once again playing the game of their lives. We were even up by a couple goals at the half. But the Ottawa team was well coached, very good, and they didn’t panic. They played their own experienced, confident game and half-way through the final period they took a one goal lead.

I called a time-out, and gave my starters a bit of a rest. I can’t say that I gave them any kind of special pep talk, simply telling them to rest and keep playing the strong game that they played all along, and to muscle through that illegal pick that was still causing us grief. Good defense means less goals for them and more time on offence for us. Our team tied the game pretty quickly and every play going into the final minutes of the period were anxiety-filled and intense. The period ended on a tie.

The overtime rules for the medal round was two 3-minute periods, then if still tied, the game went into 5-minute sudden death periods. In the first overtime period Ottawa scored and we couldn’t answer. In the second overtime, Christine drew a kick-out (penalty) from the hole (the centre offence) and she scored on the power play. The two timed overtime periods ended in a draw, now came the sudden death rounds.

So many years later, I don’t remember how long they played in this final period. I only remember the final sequence that ended the game. We were on offence and our shot clock was running out. Arianna caught a pass from about 7 meters out and we were all yelling, “Shoot!” Arianna took the shot, the ball hit the crossbar and floated on the goal line. I remember seeing the goal judge, on the same side of the pool deck as us, stand up out of his chair, flag in hand ready to wave it if the ball fully crossed the goal line. It didn’t. The goalie reached back and plucked the ball from its precarious spot, half-way into the net. We were literally centimetres away from winning the goal medal game… millimetres if you consider the location of the ball as it hit the crossbar.

The goalie then passed the ball down the right wing, it was passed further down to one of Ottawa’s strongest players. She had a slight lead on my player, but my player was swimming hard and taking good position to prevent a breakaway to the net. The Ottawa player picked up the ball and took a hard shot across the net. My goalie, Titia, made a great save. She had the angle covered and had to reach across the net to block the shot. She did, but the rebound landed right on the hand of an Ottawa player, who did a quick wrist-shot before the defence could react. With such a quick rebound shot, Titia was still out of position from the previous shot and the wrist shot went easily into the unprotected side of our net.

We lost.

I remember tears welling up in my eyes. Yes, it hurt to lose. Yes, it was gut-wrenching to think how close we came to winning less than 20 seconds earlier. But as much as that hurt filled me, I also felt joy. I felt proud of what my girls had done. They played their hearts out. They put everything they had into they game. I remember Christine holding on to the edge of the pool, my fittest athlete, asking for help to get out. After helping her, she lay on the pool deck exhausted, defeated, having put everything into the game. I remember seeing the tears in everyone’s eyes and just being overwhelmed, not in disappointment as much as in pride. These girls did everything they could to win. They played for the second game in a row against a much more experienced team, and showed that they were worthy opponents. They were silver medalists with hearts of gold.

I’ve coached gold medal winners. I’ve played in gold medal games, and worn the gold medal around my neck as a player and as a coach. I’ve never had a moment in sports that I’ve been more proud of a team than I was in that tournament, and that second place finish.