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That sounds normal to me. Maybe I also have a terrible autobiographical memory. But maybe your wife just has an exceptionally good memory?

shantly 7y ago
It took me until my mid 20s to realize something was wrong with me. I have a few impressions here and there from my past but can only roughly order any of it and mostly it's just gone, by a day or two later. Probably why my most dreaded assignment every single year in elementary school was "write about what you did over the break" or "write about a fun time that [something from your past]". I'd struggle with those for way longer than was intended. Not kidding, hardest schoolwork I had K-5. Occasionally things like that would still come up in later grades but by then I'd figured out I could just make up most of it and no-one would care, which solved the problem.
- cma 7y ago
  You do seem to have a pretty good memory of those assignments from school though, especially if it goes back to kindergarten.
  - all2 7y ago
    Emotional spikes tend to rise above the noise floor of your day to day, so it makes sense that a mundane summer was forgotten, but the anguish of trying to remember stays fresh.
  - shantly 7y ago
    I remember the general phenomenon. I couldn't tell you about any one of them in particular. That's about how my memory works. "Oh that was totally a thing, yeah, I feel this way about it." "Oh neat, can you tell me about a time that happened?" "Um. No, not a single detail nor do I have any certainty when or how many times it may have happened. More than one I think? A half dozen? Over... years? Starting... youngish?" Trying to conjure up something relevant I get an incredibly impressionistic snapshot of I think some desks. Row? Pod? Dunno. It's... sunny? That's 100% of what I've got. No people or other objects are present. Just a splatter of colors that may be some desks in some configuration. The only memories I used to have in any detail were ones where I'd done something bad (I had a perhaps too-well tuned sense of "bad" for a kid, mind, though fortunately that also meant I didn't do bad things that much) and that's only because I'd spend like an hour cataloguing and re-living and ruminating over all of them every. Single. Night. Those are almost entirely gone now too, as I managed to break myself of that years ago. It's really sad now that I have kids. Mostly I just try not to think about how I'm kinda sorta more dead than most people, in a sense, even as I live. If not for the fact that being clever is so valuable to my family (as in it pays the bills) I'd trade a bit of that for a somewhat better autobiographical memory without hesitation. I tried to hold on to a couple vivid memories of my kids when they were very young by re-playing them a few times a day, but I slipped too many times and those are mostly gone too. Kept one semi-intact for a year or two, which is really good for me. There's a bit left, but not much. I don't even remember what the others were at all.
dghughes 7y ago
Actress Marilu Henner has an exceptionally good memory she can recall every second of her life in perfect detail she has hyperthymesia. She was on the TV show Taxi in the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia

shantly 7y ago

It took me until my mid 20s to realize something was wrong with me. I have a few impressions here and there from my past but can only roughly order any of it and mostly it's just gone, by a day or two later. Probably why my most dreaded assignment every single year in elementary school was "write about what you did over the break" or "write about a fun time that [something from your past]". I'd struggle with those for way longer than was intended. Not kidding, hardest schoolwork I had K-5. Occasionally things like that would still come up in later grades but by then I'd figured out I could just make up most of it and no-one would care, which solved the problem.

cma 7y ago
You do seem to have a pretty good memory of those assignments from school though, especially if it goes back to kindergarten.
- all2 7y ago
  Emotional spikes tend to rise above the noise floor of your day to day, so it makes sense that a mundane summer was forgotten, but the anguish of trying to remember stays fresh.
- shantly 7y ago
  I remember the general phenomenon. I couldn't tell you about any one of them in particular. That's about how my memory works. "Oh that was totally a thing, yeah, I feel this way about it." "Oh neat, can you tell me about a time that happened?" "Um. No, not a single detail nor do I have any certainty when or how many times it may have happened. More than one I think? A half dozen? Over... years? Starting... youngish?" Trying to conjure up something relevant I get an incredibly impressionistic snapshot of I think some desks. Row? Pod? Dunno. It's... sunny? That's 100% of what I've got. No people or other objects are present. Just a splatter of colors that may be some desks in some configuration. The only memories I used to have in any detail were ones where I'd done something bad (I had a perhaps too-well tuned sense of "bad" for a kid, mind, though fortunately that also meant I didn't do bad things that much) and that's only because I'd spend like an hour cataloguing and re-living and ruminating over all of them every. Single. Night. Those are almost entirely gone now too, as I managed to break myself of that years ago. It's really sad now that I have kids. Mostly I just try not to think about how I'm kinda sorta more dead than most people, in a sense, even as I live. If not for the fact that being clever is so valuable to my family (as in it pays the bills) I'd trade a bit of that for a somewhat better autobiographical memory without hesitation. I tried to hold on to a couple vivid memories of my kids when they were very young by re-playing them a few times a day, but I slipped too many times and those are mostly gone too. Kept one semi-intact for a year or two, which is really good for me. There's a bit left, but not much. I don't even remember what the others were at all.

dghughes 7y ago

Actress Marilu Henner has an exceptionally good memory she can recall every second of her life in perfect detail she has hyperthymesia. She was on the TV show Taxi in the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilu_Henner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia