 I remember the last meal I ate in a restaurant: with my wife, our daughter and our son-in-law, at Zero Zero on Folsom Street in San Francisco. It was March 6. The day my friends and I had our last baseball practice in the park: March 11. The last time I saw my son: March 1. I dropped him two blocks from the rail station in Stamford, Conn., so he could run for the train.
Emotionally charged events are easier to remember than neutral ones. Something as simple as the last time I got a haircut (Feb. 12) now qualifies as an emotional benchmark, because I have no idea when I'll again feel safe visiting my barber.
For people with a rare condition known as hyperthymesia, the trivia has always been impossible to shake. For them, every detail of every day—pandemic or not—is remembered in vivid detail. Mention a date, no matter how long ago, and they'll tell you what they were wearing that day or what they had for lunch. The actress Marilu Henner has this condition, which is stressful because it creates an overdose of useless memories. Now we all have a better idea how people like Ms. Henner feel.
Research has shown that the act of remembering is frequently enhanced by forgetting. We clear space in our minds by replacing older memories with more recent occurrences. Right now there is a lot that I look forward to forgetting.
My short-term memory does seem to have improved during the pandemic. Mention a date, any date, since mid-March, and I'll be able to tell you the color sweatpants I wore, when I walked out to the mailbox, and what I saw on my walk around the neighborhood.
Memories like these are easier to preserve when nothing changes.
(c) Peter Funt. This column originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.
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