I promise you, this is a true story. I was on yard duty one morning when a little boy in Grade 2 came up and tugged on my pant leg. His face was angelic, and so was his mission, for he was looking for the rightful owner of the objects he had just plucked off the playground. Filled with an air of moral consciousness and good old menschlachkeit, he opened his hand. I gazed down at the two small treasures. "Look", he exclaimed, brimming with both innocence and the awareness of the gravity and significance of what he was doing, "Someone lost his marbles!"
I am constantly losing my marbles. The memory that I never had is going. It left when I was pregnant with my first child and hasn't returned. I make lists and conveniently forget them. In order to remember where I have parked my car at any given shopping centre, I walk backwards for a bit so I know what the area of the lot looks like so I'll find it on my way back from shopping. Of course, I have my 'regular' parking spot at any given plaza or mall. No matter how out of the way my store of choice is, I park in the same area so I'll remember where the car is. It's pathetic. And at times, pathetically funny. There's even an in-joke between me and my children, who claim that I watched a movie with them, but I can't remember seeing it. The name of the movie, ironically enough is, A Walk to Remember.
The interesting things, however, are what I can remember. I remember events. To be sure, some events are better left forgotten. Everyone has some of them. At the moment, I have a vivid recollection of two of my children having the flu at the same time when they were little and me doing round robin loads of laundry all night. Twenty years later, I can chuckle about it. I think even at the time, in my exhausted stupor, I managed to crack a smile thinking that at least the kids took turns vomitting. They've always been a considerate bunch.
I've always marvelled at the relationship between memory and the sense of smell (I apologize that this paragraph comes right after the last one...the last paragraph shouldn't linger). Smell has, as we know, the shortest attention span of the senses. You can walk into a kitchen wafting of fresh coffee, but a few minutes later you won't smell it, because the sense of smell becomes lazy. However, a scent that was inhaled as a young child, like your grandmother's chicken soup cooking, or the perfume of your father's after shave on his cheek, remains with you forever. It is the sense with the longest memory and the last to die. A familiar aroma will immediately transport you back in time.
Lately, I've been considering the connection between emotion and memory. I might not recall all the details about a particular event, but I can remember how I felt. Think of all those 'firsts' in your life. Maybe you can see everything clearly in your mind's eye, but for me, some are fuzzy. But not the feelings. They're completely intact. I know how I felt when my friend from elementary school passed away from cancer at 16. I remember how my first kiss felt. I know how I felt when the doctor told me that I most likely would never have children. I know how I felt when my babies were born. I know how I felt when I got married. I know how I felt when I got divorced. And I know how I felt when my firstborn walked down the aisle.
Emotion and memory can be very dangerous. I've always said that when it comes to teaching (and parenting and friendship), I'm never worried about what I call the 'scripted' things I say in class. Lessons are controlled. I know what I have to say to get the message across. What I fear are the unscripted things, both in and out of the classroom. Messages, either spoken with words or via body language can be misinterpreted. Tone of voice resonates.People hear things with their own personal history playing in their minds, and we're not privy to any of it. It is, therefore, so easy to do something that could unwittingly cause someone to feel hurt, and that memory can remain with them forever.
Of course, thank goodness, there are times when the unscripted word gleans something unexpectedly good. I remember, many many years ago while I was taking a walk, I met a parent of a child I had taught a few years previous. The parent stopped me to say how the child was doing. She thanked me profusely, gushing that had it not been for what I had said to her about her child, the child wouldn't have gotten the help he needed. She went on to tell me that she was routinely relating the story in lectures she was giving. I was stunned. All I could say was, thank you. I was too embarrassed to admit that I had absolutely no recollection of what I had said to her. To this day, I have no idea what I said, but I haven't forgotten how powerful and potentially dangerous the unscripted word can be.
'Think before you speak' is a great adage. Doesn't always work for me. Every once in a while though, I am reminded that each of us has the power to give someone else lasting memories. The unscripted word can be risky. It can also be inspiring. The mystery is, we rarely know how our words and actions will affect others.
I think the only way to combat the unscripted is to work on creating more of the scripted. The aim is to foster positive, enduring memories with our students, friends and loved ones as often as possible. We're apt to lose a few marbles along the way, but if we feel confident about the scripted as well as the unscripted in our lives, those who find those marbles will have something of beauty in their hands,
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