I think the idea of memories is interesting. Some people have good memories where they seem to remember every minutia of their lives, and other people are more like me where they don’t seem to remember much. Why do we remember the things that we do and why are some people better at it than others?

For the past two days, I keep remembering these gummies that I used to get as a kid. I used to go to a convenience store in my town with my dad, and our only intention would be to get these gummies. They were penguins that were orange in color, had white stomachs and were peach flavored. We called them peachy penguins, which I don’t think was their actual name, but it very well could have been.

One day we went to get the gummies, and they weren’t there. The company just stopped making them. So that day we left the convenience store, and I haven’t been back since. I moved on with my life and ate other gummies over the years. No big deal.

But why do I remember these gummies randomly while forgetting other things, while forgetting actual people that I’ve met or while forgetting activities that I’ve done? I know that I remember the gummies because they were something I looked forward to and bonded with my dad over, but I find it interesting that I can’t get these gummies out of my mind even though I haven’t had them in years.

Years ago, I came to terms with having a bad memory, so I try my best to work toward remembering different things. During the day and right before bed, I think about the things I want to remember. I think about conversations I’ve had recently, people I’ve met or interacted with and people’s facial expressions from different moments in order to remember them. To this day, I still think about some things that happened months ago because I know they aren’t fully established memories. I don’t want to forget them, so I’m preventing that from happening.

However, learning how to remember things has also taught me how to forget them. If I purposefully don’t want to remember something, then I don’t think about it. A faint memory of it might randomly pop up at some point, but I can just not acknowledge it, which eventually makes the memory fade and stop reappearing.

Even though I have some control over my memories, there’s still a lot about memories that I don’t understand. Like why do different people remember different things? There are events that could have happened that meant nothing to me and that I forget, but maybe someone else remembers them as being important. Likewise, there have definitely been moments I find significant that other people don’t remember at all. There are even memories that I share with people that are probably different based on how we each perceive them.

I don’t understand everything about memories, but I find the mystery of them exciting. Even though I don’t remember as much as some people, it makes the memories I do have even more significance to me. So I may not know why I can’t get peachy penguins out of my mind this week, but I’m enjoying the memory of them.