I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had information backed up on hard drives and have lost them all. I learned a lesson about back-up in the Great Crash Of 2003 or ’04, I think it was. My own memory is totally unreliable. Heh.

Last year, I lost a huge chunk of data also, on a 180 gig external HD I had. It taught me not to get too attached to what was being saved, but truth to tell, if I’m not using it I can’t miss it when it’s gone, right? I tend to hoard information like some people hoard newspapers, straws, or milk jugs. E-books I never read, recipes I never made, snippets of work I never accessed again after it disappeared into the nether-world of Back-Up.

What I do depend on is my little flash drive, and emailing myself.

My kids are like my flash drive. Many things I don’t remember; I’m not sure how my memory got so bad, other than it was a survival skill set from a traumatic childhood, coupled with some recreational activity in the 70′s. (Hey, don’t judge. You had to be there.) It amazes me how much my kids remember, but then, they’re a lot closer to the time period of their childhood than I am, if you feel me.

The stories of my grandbaby (AKA “Muffin”) my daughter tells me jogs the memory banks, and I treasure them. They’re like old friends who have come to visit, don’t overstay their welcome, and leave a warm, fuzzy feeling when they depart. Like, when Muffin wakes her up by peeling up her eyelids. She used to do that. Or when he became stuck in the couch cushions with his legs waving in the air and she was laughing so hard she could hardly pull him out. She did something very similar when she was a baby, and used to get so mad when I’d tell the story and laugh about it.

They’re making their own memories, and it’s amazing to see how they echo the past. The good part of the past.

I like it.