Memory

Day 168: The human brain is a strange and sometimes unpredictable organ. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are 14-16 billion neurons, each neuron connected to thousands of others by synapses. A synapse can be compared to a light switch. It has two positions, "on" and "off." Until stimulated, a synapse remains open, i.e., unconnected, "off." When it closes (picture a lightbulb over a head here if you so desire), the light comes on. Now whether or not these synapses have anything to do with conscious thought has been the subject of much discussion over the years and nothing has been proven one way or the other; I choose to think it does. In fact, I'm sure I can feel my synapses springing open and snapping closed even as I write this post. That said, I am also aware that some of them are pretty rusty, and there are a few I'm sure will never swing on their hinges again. However, one of them surprised me in the night, and in the process, it triggered several more which had gone at least fifty years without functioning.

When I was attending fifth grade at a parochial school, the boredom of the classroom was broken by rare and precious visits from a drama teacher. She instructed us in the correct posture for reciting poetry (girls with their hands held at waist level, one resting in the other, boys with their hands behind their backs at "parade rest"), and introduced us to Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" with the injuction to revise the last line to use "men" in place of the rude word "fools." She intended also to have us put on a play, somethingornaother "Fan" which I believe she may have authored (it was certainly not Oscar Wilde!). I won the part of the washerwoman/cook when I read it with a Cockney accent. However, something unfortunate occurred before we could present it before the school, and the drama teacher disappeared without explanation. The play might have been "The Golden Fan" or "My Lady's Fan" or some such (I've been unable to locate it under either of those titles), but the drama teacher...the drama teacher...what was her name? Apropos of absolutely nothing, I rolled over in bed at 3:30 AM this morning and said, "Mrs. Manx!"

Tell me where that came from. I was awake, as I often am in the pre-dawn hours, debating whether I should get up or not, and I had not been thinking about the play or the school or anything else which might have caused that particular synapse to snap shut. I swear you could have heard it clank if you'd been standing beside my bed. And another followed it: "Mr. MacKenzie!" He was my fifth-grade teacher, another name which had fled my memory by the time I was twenty. But why now? Why did these two names leap into my head without preamble? Admittedly, my best thinking is done while I'm horizontal. I've been aware of that since I was very young indeed. And should I have a brainstorm in the night and sit up to write it down, the verbalization vaporizes before I can lay hands on a pen. Yes, the brain is a funny organ indeed, and mine apparently has some shelves in sore need of dusting. Who knows what other treasures I might find in its corners?