Memorable Memories

I have always been fascinated at the power of memory. The way a song, phrase, sound and even a smell can instantly transport us back to a previous emotional spot is amazing. Sometimes it is subtle, bringing a wry smile, but other times it is overwhelming, your face turns red, neck gets hot or tears well up. All from a memory. It’s a little weird as well as an incredible display of what our minds are capable of.

Yesterday I posted some old pictures on Facebook. I had been digging around through old photo albums and came across two scrapbooks I had put together during high school. On a whim I scanned a few pictures and put them up on my page. I then threw out a “just so you know” message on Twitter—which automatically updates my Facebook page (how very meta of me!)—and waited to see what the response would be. I was shocked. Before an hour was up, people had tagged nearly every person in the group shots and the comments were flooding my inbox. I reconnected with several people I had not “spoken” to in years, some never, since they were siblings of old friends, and was in the midst of a few mini conversations at once. The most memory jarring photo, by far, is the group shot of our performance choir, taken at the Buccaneer Festival in Corpus Christi, Texas, 1977. The choir director from then (whom I had recently been in contact with via Facebook, naturally) tagged nearly every person in the choir from memory and his recollections of our choir (which he shared via comments) started a wonderful traipse through our past with several people joining in. It has been fun as well as a fascinating.

This is “social media” in its purest and best form. No one selling anything. No one asking you to take a quiz. No one trying to convince you that having 10,000 followers makes you powerful. No, the power comes from memories and being able to reconnect those threads, digitally or otherwise. And now I have new memories on top of old.

NOTE: My choir director mentioned he has recordings of our choir that he is going to try and get digitized. He will then share them with us online. Another layer, another memory (and hopefully we are as good as we remembered!).