My daughter has a seminar class called Memory this year. Sounds like a great class- they're reading fiction and non-fiction on the topic and they watched Memento for homework.  And one day, one of the students brought in her mother to speak. Her mother has actual amnesia from taking a blow to the head and remembers virtually nothing from before the incident, which happened only a few years before this student was born. I always figured that amnesia, like six-pack abs, white teeth, and straight noses, was one of those things that only happened on TV or in the movies.

It's clearly more prevalent in pulp fiction, but the implications are fascinating. Within a movie, you always see the people talking just like they would have before, just they don't remember who they are. What if you didn't know what a toaster was called? How would you ask for toast, or would you even know what toast was? I don't know the answers, and I'm guessing nobody does. A movie is just a couple of hours. This woman has spent 24 years reconstructing herself. It's like 17 Again except you don't get to look (or dance) like Zac Efron.

But it isn't even just that. How much do you do every day that's routine? And how hard is it when you have to learn a new routine- new school, new job, new spouse? Really hard, right? I'm sitting here typing this now. What if I not only didn't know how to type, but didn't even know what those grey markings on the keys meant? I don't know enough about either this woman or the brain to know if the language center gets wiped out in the same way childhood memories do. And I'm not even getting into the whole question of identity.

It does give one pause, though. And it reminds you not to take things for granted.