It Seems Like Just Yesterday, by Paul Shirley

My youngest brother turned 20 last week. I was 11 when that brother, Tom, was born, meaning that I was old enough to process the event. Because my brain was sufficiently developed to form memories when Tom was hatched, I’m able to discuss his life with other people who’ve known him these 20 years. Namely: my parents. As we did just that over a recent dinner, we were each tempted to say that Tom’s birth “seemed like it was just yesterday”.

By saying that, we were implying that the 20 year period since Tom’s birth has passed more quickly than we were originally aware. At dinner, we were trying to mark time retroactively and, undoubtedly, we each lamented that those two decades had gone faster than we’d realized, thinking to ourselves, “I wish I’d enjoyed that more.” But were we being fair to ourselves? Did the memory of my brother’s birth really feel like “just yesterday”?

My brain carries around vivid memories of that weird day in November. Actually, the day itself wasn’t all that weird. In fact, it would have been perfectly normal, except for the nine months that had preceded it. Those nine months had been kicked off by the announcement to my two brothers and me that our family would soon grow by the quantity of exactly one tiny human. The potential addition of another Shirley had come as quite the surprise to minds that were just starting to grasp the significance of sexual reproduction.

We were awakened early by my parents, who told us we didn’t have to go to school because our mother was having the then-unnamed baby that day. Dan, Matt and I spent the hours waiting for said anonymous baby in the Topeka Public Library, which is across the street from the hospital where my mother and father were participating in a slightly more active version of the same sort of waiting.

Back in the library, I read the book version of Willow, which I contend is the only book I’ve ever read that was based on a movie, and not the other way around. Willow had been given to me by my mother that day, and it contained a note. I don’t remember what the note said; such is the unpredictable nature of our memories that I remember the forgettable book but forget the memorable note.

My brothers Dan and Matt read store-bought books as well. (Odd, considering that we were surrounded by books of the borrowable nature.) I can only assume that theirs also contained missives from our mother.

After Tom’s birth, the three of us were worried less about the newest addition to our family than we were about whether our parents would let our grandmother – in for the week from Wichita – take us to Videotrend and help us rent a Nintendo game. They did allow, and we did rent. Pro Wrestling, to be exact. I feel slightly less terrible that one of the more standout memories from the day of my youngest brother’s birth involved a video game because Starman’s bicycle kick remains my favorite pixellated wrestling move.

Even though they are 20 years old, I can access those memories easily. They’re important to me, even if the actual events I remember (mediocre books, legendary video gaming experiences) seem unimportant to the nonpartisan observer. Their relatively trivial nature isn’t the point. The point is that they’re easy to remember, even though they happened 20 years ago.

On the other hand, if one considers how much time 20 years is – if he considers how long today will be or has been, and multiplies that times 7,300 – he’ll quickly remember that 20 years isn’t anything like “just yesterday”.

How can this be? How is that we possess this ability to turn any past event into a duality of remembrance?

I’m sure that my brain works differently from the brains of the rest of humanity – I think a lot more than I should, often about subjects I shouldn’t. But I have a feeling that some things are universal. Memory storage, for example.

Our brains don’t keep our memories in a strict time line. Obviously, they are originally stored that way – I still haven’t met anyone with a time machine. But, while our memories may get built like records, put together in perfectly ordered grooves, they don’t stay like that. Important events are usually kept handy. Traumatic falls from the jungle gym, missteps at high school dances, and triumphant free throws in overtimes of important basketball games get to stay, while other, less important memories, like supper on March 15, 1986, are usually dismissed or, at least, compressed to save disk space.

The clarity of those memories is not necessarily tied to the recency of their storage. I can tell you, with certainty and without hesitation, who caught the final out of the Kansas City Royals’ 1985 World Series win. (Darryl Motley.) And not because I looked it up on Wikipedia. I remember because that Royals triumph might have been the single most important event of my then-7 year existence.

On the other hand, if you asked me what I did two weekends ago, I would probably close one eye, raise the other, and then stumble through, “I think…I went…to a…concert?”

Thus, while I am not a neurologist, I think it’s safe to say that, when it comes to recollection, our brains are as unpredictable as a 23-year-old girl who’s just been dumped. The memories they contain don’t unspool front to back. Or rather, back to front. If they did, I would have been forced to endure every mind-numbing college statistics lecture and every painful female-related rejection just to get back to Tom’s birth.

In other words, it’s a blessing that our brains access our memories like they do.

Understanding that this is the case – that the efficiency of our brains might occasionally trick their users – comforts me. I, for one, don’t like to think that my life is racing by without my awareness of it. Which is exactly what we are doing when we say, “That seems like just yesterday”. We’re, in effect, saying, “What meaningless, unimportant, and very forgettable things have I been doing for the last 15 years that I can so easily remember the sex ed class where Amy Ruhlen blurted out ‘That looks like Mars!’ when the health teacher showed my class a closeup of genital warts?”

The answer is that, yes, you’ve probably been doing some rather unimportant shit. But you can also be forgiven the vividness of your STD memory, and you can be forgiven for thinking that it seems like just yesterday. Because as far as your brain is concerned, it is. In fact, it probably seems more recent than “just yesterday”. To your brain, it might seem like “just four minutes ago”. Because it’s possible that you can more easily remember that sex ed class than what you did exactly four minutes ago.

Try it. Feel free to insert your own painful middle school memory.

See what I mean?

In our age of instant messaging and digital cameras, it is tempting to think that we’re rushing through our lives. But what if the opposite is the case? What if we’re actually trying to wring too much meaning out of them? What if, by documenting every detail of our often mundane existences, we’re making things worse for ourselves?

I don’t actually know the answer to any of those questions; I’m the worst culprit when it comes to attempts to confirm that I’m enjoying every moment, that I’m squeezing every bit of enjoyment out of my life.

I’m not convinced that my method is the right one. There remains a place for “being” in the sense that “being” means to exist, without worrying about how fast time is going by. Because the funny thing about time: it won’t go any faster or any slower, just because we want it to.

When my brother Tom turns thirty, I’m sure the rest of my family and I will be tempted to say, again, about his birth: “My, that seems like just yesterday.” Or rather, I hope we’ll be able to say that. If I’ve been wiped out by a train and am lying in a coma, one of my brothers will be able to say, “Well, for Paul, it seems like just…never.” But comas aside, we’ll likely fall into the same trap. We might even say, “Yeah, and when he turned 20, and we said his birth seemed like just yesterday – that seems like just yesterday too.”

I hope we won’t. Because even though I’m sure I’ll look back ten years from now and wish that I had these years back because they, in my mind’s eye, “flew by”, they won’t have. Not really. Ten years will still be a long time, even when, to my brain, it will seem like just yesterday.