In the first Back to the Future movie, as Doc Brown examined Marty\u2019s photograph of his family in which his brother and sister\u2019s images were slowly vanishing, he commented, \u201cErased from existence\u201d to describe what was happening to them. I\u2019ve discovered that the older I get, the more I\u2019m forgetting things\u2014whole experiences. It\u2019s as if they never happened. <\/p>\n
\tOn Labor Day weekend a couple of years ago, my old roommate from college came up from Santa Clarita to visit us with his family. As we chatted on the back patio waiting for the burgers to finish barbecuing, we talked about how little time we seem to have any more to goof off. I happened to mention that my wife had just given me the complete Twilight Zone series on DVD for Father\u2019s Day and so far I\u2019d only managed to view the first two seasons. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cRemember when we went down to hear Rod Serling give a talk about the space program?\u201d my roommate asked, referring to the creator of the Twilight Zone series.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cUm, no,\u201d I shook my head. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cYeah\u2014remember, we drove down to Pasadena in your brown Honda Civic. I don\u2019t think you\u2019d gotten married yet\u2014you were still at UCLA.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAnd then, after a moment\u2019s thought, I told him, \u201cI think Rod Serling died in 1975. And my Honda was a 1980.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cAre you sure he died that early?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tI pulled out my cell phone and found the Wikipedia article about Rod Serling. \u201cYeah\u2014he died on June 28, 1975. I wasn\u2019t even living in California yet. So we couldn\u2019t have gone to hear him talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI know it was someone in the entertainment industry, and it had something to do with the space program. He\u2019d go on and on about \u2018billions and billions…\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cOh, that had to be Carl Sagan, then,\u201d said my wife.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThat\u2019s who it was,\u201d my roommate said.<\/p>\n
\tBut I shook my head. \u201cI don\u2019t remember driving down to Pasadena to hear him speak\u2014or anything like that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tAnd, as we continued to talk about it over our burgers, my mind remained a blank on the incident. One would think that a trip to see a famous person talk on a subject that fascinates me would be something I would remember well. But it has vanished entirely\u2014erased from existence\u2014as if it were an old cassette tape. The long drive, finding a parking spot, the entire evening, has entirely disappeared from my mind. No matter what my roommate said, he sparked no recollection at all. <\/p>\n
\tI suspect it was something I had learned about from the Planetary Society. In 1980 I was a member of that organization and Carl Sagan was the one running it. <\/p>\n
\tThen my roommate\u2019s wife admitted that she can\u2019t remember much of her time in college\u2014at least the parts of it when she was sitting in class. She has the information she learned while she was there. But the experience, the memories of sitting in lectures, seems to have faded away with the passing of the years. <\/p>\n
\tAnd as I contemplate my own years in college and graduate school, both as student and professor, I have to admit that it all kind of runs together. I can remember certain moments, like the time an owl jumped out of the big tree next to our classroom and made a huge ruckus.<\/p>\n
\tAnd I can remember certain tests in school\u2014like the final exam in my Russian history class. There was just one essay question: \u201cPlease summarize Russian history from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present.\u201d Later my professor commented that reading my answer was like reading his own notes. <\/p>\n
\tWhich is why I find it so puzzling that something has slipped from my mind, particularly something that should have been so memorable as a lecture from Carl Sagan. Generally speaking, I remember just about everything that I read and hear\u2014which served me very well in my college career.<\/p>\n
\tMy best explanation at this point is something I noticed both with my parents and with my own children. Some incidents that were very memorable to me were forgotten by parents\u2014not because the event didn\u2019t happen. Although the incident was significant to me, it wasn\u2019t for them. The same has occurred with my own children.<\/p>\n
\tSo, as significant as that lecture was to my roommate, apparently it didn\u2019t mean much to me. At the time I would have driven him to see Carl Sagan in Pasadena, I was in my graduate program at UCLA, listening to long academic discussions on a daily basis. My guess is that it was simply one more lecture in a string of lectures\u2014and my mind cared more about what I was doing in school than what happened outside it. <\/p>\n
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