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

[moon_custafer]

To be fair, I assume/hope your school years were way less traumatic than Harry’s, involving fewer dragons and spectres, and were therefore less memorable.

[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.

[nodrog]

That’s what always bothered me about Heart of Darkness, The Time Machine, et al, that are supposedly being narrated ex tempore to listeners:  Any cop will tell you, any court reporter will tell you, depositions and statements aren’t ever made like that.  They’re a mess!

The best example I’ve encountered of this actually used in a story was by Barry Malzberg, where the entire story is just such depositions - and they are each and all so self-serving, vague, backbiting, &c., that you have to sift signal from noise to piece together what happened!

[calimac]

I read the first four Harry Potter books, and I certainly could not remember which events occurred in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Secrets and which occurred in Harry Potter and the Fire of Ashbakan.

[rhoda_rants]

You know what I remember most vividly from my actual school days? Books I was reading and movies I was watching at the time. I very much lived in my imagination whenever possible. I'm kinda fine with that, though. I don't think it's unusual.

[mme-n-b.livejournal.com]

Well, to be fair, your school probably didn’t have nearly as many cool creatures:)