Boxing Day

I am the world’s worst when it comes to remembering people’s names, but I can rattle off birthdays and other important dates like a robot. Why? I have always wondered what strange part of my brain allows me to do that? So today, December 26, 2023, Boxing Day, I decided to find out. According to Google, it’s the hippocampus, (the brain’s “university”?) where episodic memories are formed and indexed for later access. Another search says that hyperthymesia, (a new word for me) is “the ability to recall with great accuracy and detail a vast number of personal events or experiences and their associated dates." This is a highly superior autobiographical memory. Really? On a hyperthymesiac scale of 1 to 100, maybe I’m a 0.1. But my brain is not THAT good. If it were, I would be able to recall certain details vividly, but I'm just good at remembering lots of birthdays and a few historical dates. That’s it. One big timeline!