Flashbacks

For the past three weeks I've been reading a book for one of my classes called Understanding Reading. Basically it talks about how people learn to read, how we learn how to think, etc. In one chapter summary, the author discusses how comprehension is the absence of confusion. And the basis of comprehension is prediction, the prior elimination of unlikely alternatives. Prediction means asking questions, and comprehension means being able to get some of the questions answered. If our predictions fail, we are surprised. (For example, I never would have predicted that a few weeks ago, my friend Jenn would leave me a delightful "new aunt survival guide" at the front desk of my employer. Therefore I was surprised. On the other hand, if my boss thinks he might be able to scare me by jumping out from behind the cubicle wall, that thought has already crossed my mind; since I considered it a possibility, I was not surprised.)

As a side note, being bored, by definition, is when we have nothing to predict because we have no interest or uncertainty. :) Think about that next time you have nothing to do!

Continuing on.

Of course, our understanding is directly or indirectly related to something else--that "something else" is usually buried somewhere in the back of our minds. But occasionally we'll encounter situations that might feel familiar to us, and if we think long enough, we'll link said situation with a situation that may have happened long, long ago. Some people may call these encounters "memories," but they are more than that: they are related to everything else we know. Call them what they will, but situations upon situations create the entire summary of your life experience.

That was a long introduction to the point of this post (and I figure perhaps someone might find it interesting--Peter?) but I find it fascinating when I am walking down a hallway, for example, or down a stairwell, and I suddenly have a flashback--back to a situation that was similar to the one I was in when I experienced the thought.

Today, for instance, I was walking down the stairwell and had an instant memory about when I lived in the dorms. I lived on the third floor, so I had to climb a lot of stairs. Mynamyn and I often played "hot lava" up the stairs, which meant that we could not touch the stairs--yes, we climbed "up the stairs" by climbing up the railings until we reached our floor. Then we leaned over, opened the door, and jumped as far as we could to land on the hallway carpet. If we landed on the entrance of the stairwell, we died.

Random memories, eh? I never would have thought of that one on my own.

And the other day I was in Macey's looking at all the Valentine's stuff, trying to figure out what to send my brother. (I found some awesome football valentines that turned into a field goal game--he's going to love it.) My eyes passed over some metal valentine's mailboxes, and instantly I had a memory of being in 2nd grade and making a valentine's day mailbox to take to class. When everyone is young like that, it really doesn't matter who sends you valentines--most everyone gave them to everyone else. And you had to have some sort of decorated container to collect all these love notes from your 32 classmates of course.

Next time you have a memory like that where you can place the situation you're in with one you had in the past, it's really not a coincidence that you might think of the latter. Everything we know is related. Somehow.