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Jewish World Review
Feb. 22, 2013/ 12 Adar 5773
Brain storage space in jeopardy
By
Lori Borgman
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The longer we live, the more history we have to learn.
This is the reason our founders were smarter than we are today.
At least we often think this is true, based on things like the admissions
standards for Harvard in the 1700s that included Greek and Latin.
People back then had more room in their brains for classical languages
because they had 300 fewer years of history to cram in their heads.
A history class I took in college was to cover U.S. History since
1877. It was an overview that turned into a partial view, like cheap
mini-blinds that won't fully open. We made it through World War
II on fumes and ran out of gas near the 58th Parallel.
Age has a great advantage over youth when it comes to history.
The older you are, the more history you've experienced. Been there,
seen that.
We used to enjoy watching my father-in-law, who lived to be 97,
watch Jeopardy. He rarely missed a history question because he was
nearly a century old. It also didn't hurt that he had a photographic
memory.
My father-in-law would have been indignant over the recent Teen
Jeopardy winner. Leonard Cooper won $75,000, but didn't know the
answer to the final question, "Who said, 'The eyes of the world
are upon you?' June 6, 1944."
"Who is some guy in Normandy?" was Cooper's answer.
I could identify with Cooper. Let he who is without a memory
lapse cast the first brain cell. Cooper illustrated my point that
the younger you are, the more history you have to learn. I subscribe
to the theory that we all have fixed memory storage. If only we
could add a few megabytes with the swipe of a credit card.
But we can't. So there are days when our brains are packed, the
wheels struggle to turn and recall grows foggy . . . somebody said
. . . I read somewhere . . . weren't you the one who told me . .
. I can't remember where I heard this. . . I might have the numbers
wrong.
We have a firm but slippery grasp of the facts. We are certain
what we are saying is true, or reasonably true, we just have no
memory of where we heard it, read it or saw it. Consequently, the
conversation we are repeating may have come from a completely different
setting, the chronology could be off by a decade or two, and the
quote from Normandy might have been from Patton.
A lot of my memory storage was regrettably squandered on things
like the theme song to Gilligan's island and the lyrics to "Wild
Thing." Let this be a lesson to you young people lip syncing with
Lady Gaga. Use your storage wisely. Save some for later when you
will learn important things on your own once you are out of school
and have more time to watch Jeopardy.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The guy in Normandy.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Lori Borgman is the author of , most recently, "Catching Christmas" (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.) and I Was a Better Mother Before I Had Kids To comment, please click here. To visit her website click here.
ARCHIVES
© 2012, Lori Borgman
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