Selective Memory

The other day I was doing some long-distance driving for a job interview, and so I plugged in my iPod as I always do during extensive drives to pass the time.  Eventually my shuffling playlist played a few songs by the Moody Blues, and I was instantly transported back to my childhood summers.  I remembered my dad playing those songs on the stereo during warm summer days, all the windows in the house thrown open to invite a cross-breeze, the music mixing with the sounds of neighborhood lawn mowers and weed whackers as the background ambiance for my brother's and my Pokemon battles and plans to explore the neighborhood creek.

I snapped out of my nostalgic trance just in time to keep from rear-ending the driver in front of me, but the fibers of that memory remained at the forefront of my mind, and I started to wonder: Why would my brain conjure that particular set of memories when listening to those songs?  Especially considering that I've listened to those same songs so many other times, and in so many different settings.  Obviously, hearing these songs in warm weather (such as yesterday) would evoke flashbacks of similar warm weather events of my childhood, but what about the other seasons of the year?  I had listened to the same songs in the cold weather during my childhood, but when listening to them as an adult, even in the dead of winter, I continue to reminisce about the summers I grew up with.  Admittedly, my memories of childhood summers trump just about all others, but how could that association be so strong as to convince my senses that I am not driving or cleaning or shovelling snow, but rather playing games with my brother on a warm, breezy summer afternoon.

Everyone has a favorite memory or memories, and to an objective listener, the events may not seem like anything worth remembering.  But for the person to whom these memories belong, there are indescribable and subtle nuances that comprise its entirety, and the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.  To you, reader, the memory I've recounted here may appear to be simply that of boring, uneventful summer days.  But I remember it as days of bonding with my brother, sharing in the musical tastes of my father, and most of all, enjoying the freedom represented by all the sights, sounds, and smells of summer.  That association is strong enough to bring those summer memories flooding back with only the slightest of stimuli (i.e. listening to the Moody Blues).  Now that I have a nine-to-five job and no longer enjoy such freedom in the summertime, I can recall memories like this as a constant reminder of the childhood, and more generally, the life that I have been blessed with.

Please feel free to post your own associative memories in the comments below, we'd love to hear from our readers!