My wife and I recently celebrated our 32-year anniversary, the week before Christmas. Our kids gave us tickets to Universal Orlando, so we spent the day walking around, visiting Harry Potter World, Jurassic Park, and anyplace to sit down that we could find. We even had a nice dinner at The Three Broomsticks in Harry Potter World, which has some very comfortable seating.
My dad and his wife also celebrated their 32-year anniversary, but they got married nine days after my wife and I. Which means I’ve been married for nine days longer than they have, and that should make me an expert. I have offered to give advice if they have any questions, but they have not asked me.
Advice like don’t ever forget your anniversary. Hold that date sacred. Burn it into your memory. Anytime you hear that number at random, tell yourself, "That’s when we got married."
This will help you avoid remembering your anniversary two days after the fact, which is what they did this year.
Not one of them — both of them forgot it and only remembered it when they were looking at old photos, and saw a gift that had been given to them for a past anniversary. And then remembered, "Oh, yeah, our anniversary was two days ago."
This may not be completely accurate, but neither of them has a humor column, and whoever controls the media controls the narrative, so I get to tell the story.
This is not the first time this has happened to my dad, either. Many years ago, when he and my mom had been married for a few years*, and I was just a year or two old, they forgot their anniversary.
* I realize this means technically my dad has been married much longer than I have, but I never let facts get in the way of a good story.
My mom’s sister, Karen, always made a practice of sending my mom and dad a card on their anniversary. And one day, in June, a Happy Anniversary card arrived in the mail at their apartment.
"That’s weird," they said to each other. (To! Each! Other!) "Our anniversary isn’t until next month, but Karen never gets this wrong. Oh well, she’ll realize her mistake and send another card next month."
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| This is NOT my parents' wedding photo! |
Next month came and went, but no anniversary card arrived.
So the next time my mom called her sister, she said, "You mixed up our anniversary and sent your card a month early."
"No, I didn’t," said Karen. "I sent it on the right month. You guys were married in June."
"No, we weren’t," my mom said, probably. I’m paraphrasing a 56-year-old conversation here.
"I should know," said Karen. "I was there."
And that’s when my mom and dad both realized — with shock and horror, I hope — that they had both simultaneously forgotten their anniversary.
This wasn’t a case of one of them forgetting and failing to buy a present. No, they both forgot it completely, which sounds like a great premise for an O. Henry Christmas story.
It turns out this kind of joint forgetting is not uncommon.
Maybe not the anniversary thing, because I’ve only ever heard of that happening twice. And both times, it was to my dad, which made me realize fate had handed me a column topic.
A study in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology said that romantic partners may actually synchronize their brain activity during storytelling, and that this "neural alignment" can lead to a shared forgetting that just doesn’t happen between strangers.
According to the study, the closeness of a relationship changes how two people process information together. And that when one partner selectively remembers certain details of an event, the other partner will forget related, but unmentioned details.
For example, if you remember what you had for dinner at your wedding reception, your partner might forget the color of the bridesmaid dresses. Sort of like that song, "Ah, Yes, I Remember It Well."
As one article put it, "(This) suggests that memory is not just an individual archive, but a collaborative system shaped by social bonds."
Translation: You forget things together, not just on your own.
This may explain why married couples have trouble recognizing certain actors on television.
"Who’s that girl? I swear I’ve seen her on something else before."
"Which one? The one dressed as Mary?"
"No, the one next to her. The donkey with the floppy ears. What else have we seen her in? Was she in Star Wars?"
"Hmmm, according to her IMDB page, that’s our daughter."
"A-ha! I thought I recognized her!"
If you and your romantic partner have both forgotten certain events or details, there’s a reason for it. It’s not just that one of you has a sharper mind, while the other’s memory is like a rusted-out sieve. You’re both forgetful, you’re both prone to misremembering certain details, and your memory has as many holes as your partner’s. But that’s the joy of getting old together.
So, don’t worry if you forgot an important event in your lives because there’s a very good chance your partner — what’s-her-name — forgot it, too.
Photo credit: Dave Collier (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)
My new humor novel, Mackinac Island Nation, is finished and available from 4 Horsemen Publications. You can get the ebook and print versions here.