I'm reading a fic right now

[conuly]

where, for Reasons adult Harry is interacting with child Draco. Draco is chewing him out for messing up his school year, Harry is defending himself, and I'm thinking "Gosh, I don't remember the minutiae of my school days in this detail!"

And then it hit me. I really don't. I have a clearer and more complete picture of Harry Potter's school years and classmates than of my own.

Which is probably for the best, but still.

Comments

[mindstalk]

I have very little memory of day to day classes, especially in math. More of unusual things like logic puzzles or number sieves. One of diagramming sentences. Various social things, like reciting a poem, or getting yelled at in 1st grade for making my picture all in blue, or getting bullied. But getting taught arithmetic? Nada. What social studies was like? Apart from a belief in "Mesopotamia to WWI over and over", very little.

[conuly]

Oh, yes. Every once in a while somebody will blather on about how it only took their teacher a few days to teach them how to add and subtract, none of that "tens chart" or "manipulatives" or "place value" mumbo jumbo and I think - "and what do you think your class did the other 35 weeks of the school year?"

Some people with less memory and sense than either of us assume that since they only remember one or two math lessons, there really were only one or two math lessons and they just learned really fast.