Memories and Association

A bit random, but that's what a blog is for, right? So the title is pretty descriptive of what I'll be writing about I suppose.

An example – when I was little I couldn't eat very fast, so one day at breakfast we were having bagels, and I only managed to finish one half before my dad started reading a chapter from. . . the gospel of John I think. I spread the cream cheese on my bagel while he was reading, claiming that since I was doing something it would help me remember the reading better. Obviously, it worked to some extent, seeing as I still remember that now. The goal was that whenever I spread cream cheese on my bagel, I'd remember the reading. I can't say that worked very well, but whenever I think about associating certain things with others, I think about that incident, which obviously means I associate association with a memory where I was trying to associate something with something else. How confusing is that?

I'm hoping you know what I'm talking about now, and if you do you can probably think of some examples of association you have. My brother talks with me about this sometimes, and he has some very random associations. It's really very interesting.

Another association I have is the song “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” I can't remember why, but for some reason I always associate this song with Bingo. It's not completely interchangeable – usually when I play Bingo I don't think of the song, but whenever I hear the song or start thinking about it, Bingo pops to mind. I honestly don't remember why I make this association, but most likely I played Bingo while listening to the song once or some such. Most associations seem to go back to a specific event.

I find this extremely interesting, but maybe that's just me. The fact that our minds will associate two seemingly unrelated things based on a single event is just astounding. I don't really know anything about how it actually works, but the fact that it DOES work is enough for me. 

As a science-fiction-something-of-a-fanatic, stuff like this gets me all excited. Imagine taking associations and using them to manipulate people, or uncover memories they have forgotten. So many possibilities. Or do the reverse, and MAKE new associations (which people already do, such as training dogs), for example raising an elite force of soldiers in such a way that they associate the colors of another army's uniform with something really bad, so they want to destroy it. Pretty rough concept, but you can get the general idea. 

On the uncovering old memories trail, I'm thinking about something similar to the movie Inception. If someone associates trains with . . .say, old buildings, put them to sleep on a train and make the dream some kind of run down building.  I don't know exactly how it would work, but that's why it's science FICTION, right? Although if you look at older science fiction many of the things have been invented - Isaac Asimov's book "Robots at Dawn" for example features a bathroom with all kinds of motion sensors, including on the faucet. If anyone reading this has not even once used a motion sensing faucet, something is wrong.  Ha ha, that was a long tangent.

Most associations I can think of that I have aren't really positive or negative, just general associations. However I'm sure I have some negative ones, and probably most people do. Since I'm terrified of spiders, and I found one in my bed once while reading the book "A Single Shard", I could associate that book with spiders, and never want to read it again.  Seeing as I quite like that book, I'm glad I haven't made the association yet. Being robbed in a Walmart parking lot could create a bad association with Walmart. There are really limitless possibilities. Eating a certain food while doing something, seeing something at a certain location, feeling something while doing something, it goes on and on.

Not sure what else to say, hehe. I guess it's not too bad for now. . . doesn't feel complete. Oh well, it's a blog, right? So I don't think it has to be professional quality or nice and long. Good thing too, because I can't write that well.