Increasingly frequently, my pupils write "I still remember..." when they are narrating something that happened only a few months, or at most a year or two ago. When I use the same expression, I refer to things that happened decades ago.
In the same vein, the newspapers gush about married couples in filmdom, "still" in love three months after getting married...
Does this say something about changing memory maps humanity-wide, or what? What does "a long time ago" mean to most people these days?
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4 comments:
This is a curious little post with too many threads. Brings to mind 'On Time'.
In the regular world, maybe it has something to do with age. The older one grows the more one tends to clump time into years and then decades and then lifetimes (- okay, okay I'm partly kidding). Maybe many young people remember every single detail of everything that they experience within a span of three months - so they find it amazing that they still remember what happened three months ago (or a year ago) or else they don't know what 'I still remember' means.
In filmdom, time (especially for married couples) probably doesn't run like it does in the regular world. Three months of married life probably feels closer to three decades in that world.
That last bit is deeply interesting. In fact, it sounds like a question that a sociologist, at some point in time, should write a paper upon, 'Changing memory maps in different worlds: "for ever and ever" and "a long time ago"...'
You might have a point there, Shilpi: that youngsters remember vivid details. I could have felt more convinced, though, if they could write or tell me about things that they remember in detail - for most of those I deal with, the ability to recall things in detail can only be called pathetic (perhaps you have seen me congratulating some comment writers ecstatically for remembering things I said in class years afterwards: if it had been a common thing, I wouldn't have gushed, would I?)
Yes, I have noticed.... Well, then borrowing from Holmes, the theory has to be defenstrated since the facts don't fit the theory.
I've caught myself using 'a (very) long time...' even when I'm referring to something from not even a decade ago and there's one very old friend who has alarmed me on more than a couple of occasions with his deep fondness for using 'forever' and 'permanent' in painting dire, hopeless and unpleasant pictures. Kids here use 'forrrrever' to mean a weekend. 'I haven't seen you furrever!...where were you this weekend?' I don't think the very old friend and the kids here use the word in the same way...
...even in reasonable instances I guess the context is important. But I shouldn't ramble any further.
...sometimes I seriously think '...still remember' should be used only to refer to incidents from another lifetime (if one remembers). Oh. Maybe the young people feel that three months ago was another lifetime ago.
Defenestrated - I spelt it wrong. Sorry.
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